All the Little Pieces
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 1983-2014. How do you get to know someone who doesn't like to talk about their past? All the little views that others have had of Dean Winchester. No slash. No spoilers. Reviews appreciated.
1. Chapter 1 Lawrence, 1983

_**Lawrence, Kansas, May-November 1983**_

* * *

Mary Winchester leaned back against the highly stacked pillows, looking down at the baby in her arms. Nine pounds four ounces and the doctors had been joking with her about him being the next linebacker for the Wildcats. She'd smiled politely and told them to get their asses into gear and finish her stitches.

She looked up as the door to the room opened, John peering around the edge, and under him, Dean's wide eyes staring at her.

"Do you want to meet your little brother, Dean?" She smiled at him as he nodded and ran into the room, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor, barely stopping himself from crashing into the side of the bed. John followed at a slightly more sedate pace and lifted his son onto the edge of the bed beside his mother.

"He looks scrunchy." Dean looked down at the baby, his expression critical. "And red."

Behind him, John snorted, turning it into a coughing fit as he caught Mary's eye. "He'll smooth out in a day or two, Dean, he just had a tight squeeze to get out."

"You looked like that when you were born too," Mary added, thinking that her firstborn hadn't been anywhere as exhausting, and at the more average birth weight of eight pounds five ounces, a lot easier to get out.

She watched him as he tentatively extended a finger to touch his brother's hand.

"He's going to get bigger, isn't he?" He looked up at her, and she nodded.

"Yes, he's going to get a lot bigger." She glanced at John, peering over her shoulder at his newest son. "It'll be a while before you can play together though."

"That's okay. He doesn't seem to be much fun." He wriggled backwards toward the edge of the bed. "Can I go and play in the toys room?"

John and Mary exchanged a glance. "Yeah, but stay in there, Dean, until I come and get you. No wandering off."

"Yep, okay." He rolled onto his stomach, dropping feet first off the edge of the bed and onto the floor and raced back out the door.

"Well, that wasn't much of a bonding session." John walked to the door and closed it.

Mary rolled her eyes. "He's four. It'll happen, in time."

* * *

"Dean, can you wipe Sam's face, please?" Mary glanced at the table, lifting the pot off the stove as she shut the oven door with her hip.

"Mom … it's icky. And gross. And he dribbles." Dean looked at his brother, his nose wrinkling up as he watched two peas re-emerge from Sam's mouth and fall onto the tray.

"I thought you were going to be my helper today?" She set the pot onto the drainer and looked around distractedly.

Dean's brows drew together. He looked at the mess over his baby brother's face and the tray under it and exhaled gustily. "Oh, all right."

"Thanks, baby." She pointed to the counter. "Clean cloth is there."

He slid off his chair and picked up the white and yellow striped cloth, kicking the step over to the sink, climbing up and turning on the tap.

Mary turned the heat down on the vegetables which were about to boil over and looked into the oven again. The chicken was almost done, just a few more minutes. She shut the door and turned around, leaning back against the countertop as she watched Dean wipe Sam's face carefully, the baby staring at him in fascination. It wasn't often Dean got this close to him, and Sammy reached out a chubby hand to touch his brother's hair, long and feathery and overdue for a cut.

"Oh! Yuck! Mom!" Dean leapt back, staring in horror at the pureed carrot that had been transferred from Sam's fingers to his hair.

Mary laughed. "It's just carrot, Dean. It won't kill you. Finish up and I'll do the tray."

Bottom lip stuck out mulishly, Dean approached Sam again, leaning back away from him as he wiped his baby brother's chin and swiped at his hands. Sam gave a throaty laugh and waved his hands at Dean.

Mary watched in amazement as Dean laughed a little too, the carrot in his hair forgotten as the two boys looked into each other's faces. Her eldest son's eyes were as wide as Sam's, and she could have sworn there was some kind of communication between them, silent and for siblings only.

"You have to be clean, Sammy, before you touch people. You gonna make people sick if you got mashed food all over you."

She could hardly hear his voice, the seriously given advice for the baby's ears only. Sam stared at him and smiled. Dean continued to murmur brotherly wisdom as he cleaned him, and didn't say anything at all when Sam's fingers reached out and wiped down his cheek.

* * *

"Can I read a story to Sammy, Mom?" Dean sat on the couch, clean and in his fighter plane pyjamas. Mary glanced at the clock. Another ten minutes to bedtime.

"Sure, sweetie, do you want me to get him for you?" She looked at the play mat on the floor, Sam sitting up and batting blocks around the middle of it.

"No, I got him." Dean wriggled off the wide couch and crouched beside his brother, putting his arms around him. At six months, Sam was still a big baby, and Dean held him tightly, his little brother almost half his height. Mary bit her lip as she watched him carefully roll Sam onto the couch, scrambling up beside him and settling them both back against the overstuffed cushions. Dean was more than careful, she thought, he was absolutely focussed on Sam's safety.

"All okay, Dean?"

He looked up at her as he picked up the big picture book, and nodded. "Sure, Mom."

She watched Sam grab at the pages, Dean carefully lifting his fingers off them as he turned them and read slowly. Where had he learned this patience, this care? He took the same care even when he played, she knew, doing everything methodically, organising things so that he always knew where everything was. Nature, not nurture, she thought. Not from her side of the family either. Watching him, she felt a wild emotion in her chest, not sorrow or joy, not fear or guilt or gratitude, but a strange blend of all of them, tightening her throat. They were so beautiful, her boys, so perfect. Maybe that was a mother's bias, maybe every mother felt it, but it resonated through her, bringing tears to her eyes.

Hearing John come in a few minutes later, she looked up and held a finger to her lips as he turned into the living room. He stopped, and listened, walking quietly up to the back of the couch to look at them.

Sam watched his brother's face as much as the pictures on the paper in front of him. Dean pointing to the words as he read each one, his fingertip moving slowly across the page, his sweet child's voice clear and full of expression as he tried to convey the plight of the three little pigs and the intentions of the Big Bad Wolf to his baby brother.

John looked at Mary, sitting curled up in the armchair, her hand over her mouth as she watched them. He could see the shimmer in her eyes, reflected from the lamp beside her, and felt his chest tighten a little at her emotion. She looked up at him, fingers falling away to reveal a smile that wobbled slightly at the corners.

_Our sons_, her eyes said. _Our boys._

Smiling in agreement, he looked back at them, side by side on the sofa. Nothing that had come before in his life could've prepared him for this, he decided as his breath caught in his throat. A surge of protective love flared, tempered and edged with a rush of fierce determination that shook through him. He would do anything to keep them safe. Anything at all.

The feeling dissolved, leaving him feeling empty and light-headed. Glancing at Mary, he came around the end of the sofa, sitting down beside his sons. Nothing bad was going to happen to them, he told himself, not sure why that thought didn't seem to hold the same certainty today as it had yesterday.

Just a long day, he thought, looking down at the bowed heads beside him. Tomorrow would be better.


	2. Chapter 2 Blue Earth, 1989

_**Blue Earth, Minnesota, July 1989**_

* * *

Jim Murphy opened the door and ushered the boys inside. At ten, Dean knew the drill, carrying their bags upstairs to the room that was theirs when they stayed, Sam trailing behind him.

Jim watched the Impala drive off, the taillights disappearing through the trees that sheltered the drive, and closed the door slowly behind him. He walked down the hall and stopped, seeing Dean and Sam sitting on the stairs in front of him.

"Uncle Jim, is Geny going to be alright?" Dean asked softly, glancing at his brother. "Dad said Valentina was … died."

Jim nodded, drawing in a deep breath. "Your father will make sure that Geny is fine, Dean. It's very hard to lose someone suddenly, it takes a little time to adjust."

He looked at Sam's too-big eyes and tried to think of something that would distract them, for a few hours at least.

"How about a hot chocolate and some late-night TV for a while?" He gestured toward the kitchen and Dean got up, taking Sam's hand and gently tugging him down the stairs and along the hallway to the kitchen.

The ritual was always the same, at least here. The small copper-bottomed saucepan had to be watched vigilantly as the milk heated. The exact amount of drinking chocolate spooned in and stirred until the liquid was smooth and lump-free. Jim watched Dean follow the procedure he'd taught him a couple of years before, the older boy's voice low as he explained what he was doing to his little brother. Getting the mugs down from the shelf, the priest noted with a little amusement that Sam remembered which ones were their special ones – Dean's black, chosen for car, he suspected. Sam's a sunny yellow one that had a picture of an obesely self-satisfied cat on the side.

They carried their mugs into the small living room, and Jim found the remote, flicking through the channels. He was beginning to regret the suggestion as he found horror movie after horror movie, foreign dramas and film noir filling the airwaves. Then an orange-red car flashed onto the screen, spinning out on a dirt road, and he lifted his finger from the remote as the theme song for the show played with a lazy country beat.

Glancing at Dean's face, he realised that the rerun was just what was needed, and he hoped that John didn't have any particular feelings about the good ol' boys of Hazzard county, one way or the other.

In the warm room, and despite the numerous explosions and crashes on the screen, he watched Sam fall asleep, gradually toppling sideways on the sofa, his head falling onto his brother's leg within the first fifteen minutes. Dean looked down, mouth opening to tell Sam that he was missing all the good stuff, then closing again with the words unsaid. Jim watched him settle back into the cushions and pull the crocheted throw from the back of the sofa down over his brother, his eyes remaining glued to the TV.

When the episode had finished, he turned around to Jim, grinning and said quietly, "Thanks, Uncle Jim. That was awesome." He glanced at Sam. "Too bad he missed it, but he really needed to sleep."

Jim's mouth lifted slightly at one corner. "Yeah. And you too." He got up from his chair and moved next to the couch. "I'll carry Sam up."

"No, it's okay. I got him." He eased his thigh from under his brother's head, lifting back the throw and sliding his arms under the boy's shoulders and knees.

"Night, Uncle Jim."

Jim nodded, watching him carry Sam out of the room and up the stairs.

* * *

"Dean." Jim said quietly to the boy sitting next to him. "Is Sam alright?"

Dean looked up from the gun barrel he was cleaning, glancing through the open doorway to the armchair where Sam was curled up, watching cartoons on the television.

"Yeah, he doesn't talk much when he's upset. He misses Valentina." His gaze swivelled around to the man next to him. "She was like a mom to Sam, whenever we stayed there."

Jim nodded, wondering at the boy's omission. He watched Dean run the cleaner down the barrel and hold it up to the light, squinting slightly as he looked for any leftover residue.

"Are you okay, Dean?"

The boy stopped what he was doing for a second, frozen in place, then slowly lowered the barrel back to the table and put the cleaner down, his eyes fixed on the disassembled parts in front of him.

"I miss her too, Uncle Jim." He fiddled with the cloth on the table. "She wasn't like Mom, but she was nice and she looked after us." He looked back at his little brother, unmoving in the armchair. "Sam never knew Mom, not really. So Valentina was like the only Mom he had."

"He's worried that if something like that can happen to Valentina, maybe it can happen to Dad." Dean lifted his face and his eyes met Jim's, bright green in morning light, shimmering behind a veil of held-back tears.

"You're worried about that too?" Jim leaned forward, resting his hand on Dean's shoulder.

A tear slipped free over the lower lid and Dean turned away, ducking his head and wiping at his eyes.

"No. Dad's not like other hunters, he can survive anything," he said, sniffing slightly, his face still averted.

Jim leaned back in the chair and rubbed his fingertips over his forehead, wondering what to say to that.

"Your Dad's a good hunter, Dean," he finally offered, knowing it was a meaningless thing to say, especially to this boy, who had seen too much for a child his age, and who knew too much even for someone of twice his years. There was nothing else he could say, though, he couldn't offer a guarantee that John would always get out alive and in one piece.

"Yeah." Dean nodded, turning his attention back to the parts on the table. He started putting the gun back together, dribbling a little oil into the mechanism, wiping it all off. "Jim, do you know what happened to my mother?"

Jim felt his heart stutter in his chest. He looked down, wishing that the question hadn't been asked, wishing that he knew what to tell the boy.

"I know a little, Dean. But you need to talk to your Dad about it."

Dean nodded again, too fast, as if he'd expected that answer. "Dad won't talk about it. I remember … when I was little, he used to tell me about her, we used to talk about her a bit. Now he just gets angry."

Jim knew why that was. He couldn't tell the boy next to him, though. "Dean, your Dad, he misses your mother a lot," he said, feeling his way around an answer that would satisfy.

He knew John had taken control of the way he'd felt about what Mary had done, knew too that not one thing they'd found in the last two years had helped the man to let his grief go. "Sometimes, when people feel that way, they just can't talk about the person, it hurts too much."

Seeing Dean swallow a couple of times, he waited patiently. It took the boy time to get things out, full of emotion but already trying to be like his father, and not show it. He wondered sometimes if John saw the way his oldest boy was trying to be a man, long before he was ready.

"I don't know if I should tell Sam what I remember about Mom, so that he, you know, he has some kind of memories of her."

Jim closed his eyes. "I think you should, Dean. Sam needs to know about her. All that you can remember."

"I thought so too." Dean looked up at him. "I just don't want Dad to get mad."

"I don't think he will," Jim said firmly. _Not after I've talked to him about it_.

* * *

The night was hot and breathless, and they sat around the small table on the porch, drinking cold lemonade and playing cards, watching the heat lightning on the horizon and hearing the occasional mutter of distant thunder. By ten, Jim had given up on the idea of getting the boys to bed before the storm broke. Inside the house, it was like an oven and tossing and turning on hot sheets didn't do anyone any good.

Sam laid a card on the top of the pile, his hand hovering a few inches from it as he waited for his brother's next card to come down. Jim watched the concentration with amusement. The end of the little boy's tongue was sticking out slightly, and Dean's eyes were narrowed, his hand moving more and more slowly toward the pile with the card.

It wasn't a match, and they both relaxed, picking up their drinks and looking at each other with practised expressions of nonchalance.

"When will Dad be back?"

Both Dean and Jim looked at Sam. It had been over a week since they'd arrived and it was the first time he'd spoken.

"Uh, in a couple of days, Sammy." Jim looked back down at his cards, trying to hide his surprise and relief, trying not to make too much of the moment.

"Are you playing, Uncle Jim, or are you going to look at those cards a bit longer?" Dean looked at him, an eyebrow lifted, an entreaty in his eyes.

"Son, you have a lot to learn about the art of cards," Jim told him loftily, and laid his card on the top of the pile. It was the same as the card Dean had just put down and he registered it as he pulled his hand back, seeing Dean's eyes widen from the corner of his eye.

"SNAP!" Dean's hand flashed out and claimed the pile. He winked at Sam and looked at Jim, mouth curved into a knowing smirk. "Your reflexes are crap, Uncle Jim."

Jim laughed, shrugging. "They're there when it counts, Dean."

The rumble of thunder was closer now, and the very first stirrings of a slight breeze ruffled their hair. Jim looked at his watch and set his cards down.

"Looks like we'll be getting that storm after all." He stood up and drained his glass. "Time for bed, you two."

Dean looked at his pile in dismay. "But I –"

"Yeah, and you don't think I'm just gonna let you keep winning, do you?" Jim shook his head, smiling at the answering scowl.

"Dean's a sore loser, Uncle Jim." Sam looked up at him, putting his cards on top of Jim's as he got up. "He can be really mean."

Dean's mouth dropped open. "I am not a sore loser, twerp. You're a sore loser."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am –"

"This isn't really getting us anywhere." Jim interjected dryly, hoping he was concealing the lightening of his heart as well as the older boy. "Sammy, go brush your teeth. Dean, help me get this packed away."

Sam turned away and ran into the house, and Jim could hear his feet pounding up the stairs. He looked at Dean.

"Good to hear him back to normal."

"Yeah." Dean smiled slightly, straightening out his pile of cards and gathering up the others.

Under that small expression, Jim saw his relief, expanding outward. For the first time since they'd gotten here, he saw Dean's shoulders relax and the boy who was trapped under the responsibility he'd willingly shouldered emerged, looking out of the green eyes.

* * *

The cry in the darkness came just after the crack of the lightning strike and the ground-shaking roll of thunder, and Jim snapped awake, sitting up as the sheet fell off him. _The boys_.

He slid from the bed and walked quietly down the hall, pushing their door open slightly. He could hear Dean's voice, murmuring softly over Sam's sobs. Through the gap, he saw Dean sitting on Sam's bed, his arms wrapped around the little boy, rocking him gently.

"S'okay, Sammy, it was just a bad dream. Because of the storm. Ssshhh."

Sam's weeping subsided into hiccups, then silence as he listened to his brother.

"We all get bad dreams, they're not real. There aren't any real monsters, Sammy, you know that. Just too much TV." Dean smoothed down Sam's hair, patted his back.

"But it looked real, Dean. Not like the cartoons, not like pictures, it h-h-had bright eyes and it looked at me." Sam wiped his nose on his sleeve, looking up at Dean's face. "And Dad was there."

Dean rested his cheek against the top of Sam's head, brows drawn together. "In bad dreams, everything looks real. Doesn't make it real. And if Dad was there, he woulda killed it, long before it got anywhere near you." He lifted his head and looked down at Sam, wiping the tears from his cheeks. "You know Dad protects us from anything bad."

Sam nodded, a little reluctantly, Jim thought, watching silently.

"You protect me more."

Dean shook his head, shifting around slightly. "I just clean up your messes, Sammy, make sure you get to bed on time." He smiled at him. "Dad keeps us safe."

Jim drew back from the door, leaning against the hallway wall. Sam had it right, he thought wearily. Dean was his protector, his all-the-time protector, not his father. John loved them, wanted them safe, but he wasn't there. Dean was.


	3. Chapter 3 Sioux Falls, 1992

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota. November, 1992**_

* * *

Bobby turned off the engine and the tick of the slowly cooling metal was the only sound they could hear.

The early morning mist shrouded the woods and fields, rising from the river and the marshes, from the thin scrim of ice that whitened the ground, hiding the details of the land and swallowing sound, muffling even the heavy clunks of the truck doors closing.

"You ready?" Bobby looked over the boys beside him. Dean, getting tall and lanky now, the bolt-action 308 Winchester 70 rifle slung over one shoulder, and Sammy, still small and skinny, holding his .22 with the barrel pointed to the ground, the ammo bag strap across his shoulder and chest, both of them nodding seriously at him.

"You remember what I taught you last time? Hunting in the woods?" Bobby started to walk for the forest, glancing back over his shoulder at them.

"Yessir." Dean followed him, walking in the old man's footprints, his hand anchoring the butt of the rifle against his hip.

"Yes, Uncle Bobby." Sam hurried to catch up to his brother, as they disappeared into the mist.

"Alright." Bobby walked on, confidently across the rough ground that he knew well enough to walk blindfolded. Around them, the skeletal branches of the bare trees were black against the soft grey of the ground fog, and the trunks wavered in and out of view as they got closer and left them behind. He stopped a few yards onto the narrow trail and turned around.

"What can you hear?"

Dean listened. He could hear the steady drip of moisture falling from the branches of the trees and the leaves of the evergreen shrubs falling onto the thick carpet of dead leaves under their feet. He could hear a rustle, somewhere to their right, deeper in the forest.

Sam shook his head. "I can't hear anything."

"You remember what that means?" Bobby looked at them, feeling the moisture in the air soaking into his jacket. He was getting too old for these early morning hunts, he thought absently, his joints were stiffening slightly from the damp chill.

"Means that the animals know we're in the forest. Or something else is here, something big." Dean looked up at him.

Bobby nodded. "So don't be clomping your great feet hard onto the ground, step soft, watch out for the ground cover, try and be as quiet as you can. Deer have pretty good hearing." He turned away, moving down the trail silently, avoiding the dry leaves close to the edge.

Behind him, the boys followed, paying attention to the noises they were making, turning to avoid the occasional branch that protruded out onto the trail, picking up and putting down their feet as silently as they could.

A mile along, Bobby stopped, holding his hand up. Ahead, through the trees, he could see the outline of the young buck, the rack almost indistinguishable from the bare branches in the pearlescent light and shadows of the mist. He glanced back at Dean, gesturing sharply to the deer. Dean looked past him and nodded, picking out the shape quickly.

The air was still and heavy, and Bobby moved slowly, hearing nothing behind him, glad that they'd remembered some of what they'd been taught. Twice they stopped and froze as the buck raised its head, looking around, moving on when it returned to stripping the bark from the shrub at its feet.

They crouched between the trees, and Bobby leaned close to Dean, his voice just a breath against the boy's ear.

"Behind the shoulder, take your time."

Dean nodded and lifted the rifle, closing an eye as he sighted along the barrel, his finger slipping onto the trigger. Bobby watched him, noting the small, careful movements with approval, the final adjustments, the smooth pull on the trigger. The rifle shot cracked into the silence and he watched the deer bound out of the clearing and down to the river, crossing the shallow water in two leaps and disappearing into the forest beyond it.

"What happened?" He frowned down the rifle. The boy should have nailed that buck easily.

"I don't know." Dean looked up at him, shaking his head slightly. "Must have shifted the barrel slightly when I pulled on the trigger."

Bobby stared at him for a moment. He hadn't seen the barrel move at all. He sighed and shrugged, getting to his feet. "Well, never mind. We'll find another one."

* * *

An hour later, Bobby was scowling down at them. They'd found four deer in that time, in perfect situations. Both boys had managed to miss all four times.

"Waste of my time and ammunition if you two are going to miss all the time," he growled at Dean.

Dean's brows lifted, his eyes widening innocently. "It wasn't on purpose, Bobby, I just must've moved at the last second."

"In a pig's eyes, it wasn't on purpose, Dean Winchester. Don't you lie to me, boy. Takes as much skill to miss a shot like that as it does to make it." He turned around, heading back down the trail, muttering to himself.

Dean looked at Sammy, the corner of his mouth lifting up. Sam grinned back at him, and they followed Bobby out of the woods and back to the truck.

* * *

The firelight flickered over the faces of the man and the boy who sat beside it, the circle of light reaching out to illuminate the tree trunks and rocks, the small tent and the half-covered bedroll of the camp. Sam was already asleep in the tent.

"Alright, you wanna tell me what you two were playing at today?" Bobby hooked the coffee pot from the embers and poured the thick black coffee into his mug, setting the pot back as he looked at Dean.

Dean shrugged, keeping his gaze on the fire. "We didn't need it."

"You think that when the time comes you do need it, you're gonna be able to do it without practising?" Bobby asked him sourly.

"You said it yourself, Bobby. Took as much skill to miss as to hit it. If I had to, I could do it." Dean glanced at him.

"Cocky little shit, ain't you?"

Dean's mouth twisted into a small half-smile. "You think I'd freeze up and miss, if I was hungry?"

Bobby grunted non-committally and drank his coffee.

"Sammy's been having nightmares." Dean's gaze was back on the fire. "I didn't want to make that worse."

"Nightmares about what?" Bobby shifted slightly, looking over his shoulder at the tent.

"You know what." He exhaled loudly. "Dad. Hunting. Monsters. Ghosts."

Bobby was silent. Neither of the boys had gotten much of a childhood. Dean had kept the truth from his brother as long as he could, but living the way they did, it had been an impossible hope to think that he could do it forever. Or even for a few years more.

"I wanted him to stay a kid, just for a bit longer." He looked over at Bobby. "He shouldn't have to worry about this crap yet."

Neither of them should have had to worry about this crap, Bobby thought tiredly. They should have been thinking about school and friends, and girls and ball games. Building treehouses and go-karts, riding bikes and coming home at sundown tired out from the fun in their days.

John had taught Dean to shoot at six, Sam at seven. Both boys knew how to take care of their weapons, were completely disciplined about following orders, about looking after themselves, could put on a competent field-dressing and set up an overnight camp in ten minutes. Their childhoods had disappeared years ago.

Dean talked as if he were tough, but Bobby had soothed his nightmares whenever they'd stayed with him. The boy's imagination was a lot more powerful than his little brother's or his father's, Bobby thought, so much so that he would make a good hunter, a great one, even. Get inside of the heads of the monsters he tracked and give himself bucketloads of nightmares when the hunts were over and the victims were counted.

Dean looked around at the old man's continuing silence. "You think I'm wrong?"

"No, son, I don't think you're wrong," Bobby said, letting his breath out in a quiet sigh. "The load's the load, Dean. Whether we can carry it or not, we get what we get. I jus' don't see how you can make that easier on Sam."

Dean ducked his head, drawing his legs up and wrapping his arms around them, tucking his chin against his forearm. "I was thinking, that maybe … if Dad agreed … Sam could stay with you a bit more."

Bobby's mouth quirked at one corner. "That'd be fine with me, Dean. Fine if you stayed too."

The boy shook his head decisively. "No, Dad needs backup, I need to be with him. But Sam, he's really smart, he's good at school stuff and he likes it. He could have a bit more of a normal life, for a couple more years."

Bobby turned to look at him. "You deserve a childhood too, you know, Dean."

He watched the characteristic duck of the head. "I'm alright."

He wasn't alright, Bobby knew. He was nearly doubled over under the load of responsibility that had been placed on him, that he'd placed on himself, his self-confidence being eroded by the demands of keeping his father and little brother safe and not being sure he could. Maybe it would be better if Sam, at least, was removed from his load, protected by an adult so that he didn't have to worry so much about him.

"I'll talk to your Daddy when he gets back, Dean." Bobby finished his coffee. "Not sure it'll do much good, you understand, but I'll talk to him."

Dean nodded.

* * *

"You know, Dean, this is really pretty good writing." Sam looked up from the paper he was reading to his brother, sitting across the kitchen table from him and honing his knife. At the sink, Bobby stilled, the dishcloth still on the plate, his hands in the soapy warm water as he listened.

Dean looked across the table, brows drawing together. "Where'd you get that?"

"It was here." Sam gestured at the pile of school books sitting to one side of him.

"That's my homework, put it back." Dean looked at the paper, then back to his brother. "Now."

Sam shrugged, replacing the paper on the pile. "I was just saying it was a good piece."

"Right." Dean dropped his gaze to his knife again, the small circles over the stone a little faster now.

"Why do you pretend that you hate school, when you could do well if you wanted to?" Sam leaned on the table, watching him.

"I'm not _pretending_ to hate school. It's a waste of my time."

"Dad says you gotta go. If you have to go anyway, wouldn't it be better to at least try to like it?"

"No." Dean looked up again, lips compressed. "And let's just drop this conversation there."

"Sure." Sam gathered his books and carried them out. Bobby heard Dean's deep exhale and starting washing the plate again, looking down at the sudsy water absently.

He'd noticed this before, a tendency to downplay any achievement that might be conceivably regarded as academic. Or thoughtful. Bobby'd never figured out why that was. An old, odd memory rose into his mind, from his school days.

Two girls had moved into town, in his freshman year. Two years apart. What had their names been? Cleggmore. Uh, Charlene had been the older one. The smart one. And Alice, had been the younger one. The pretty one. He remembered them going through high school. The smart one and the pretty one. He'd dated Alice a few times, before he met Karen. She hadn't just been pretty, she'd gotten good grades, could have done even better if it hadn't been so accepted that she wasn't the smart one. She'd never believed him though.

He glanced over his shoulder at Dean, hearing the soft burr of the knife blade circling on the stone. Was that was going on with Dean? He didn't think he was good enough to compete with Sam? Or was he staying out of the way so that they never had to?

"You doing alright with your school work, Dean?" He picked up another plate and put it into the water.

"Yeah, no problem." Dean hunched a little a deeper into the chair.

"Sam's right, you know. If you gotta be there, you might as well pick up whatever you can. Never know when stuff like that comes in useful down the road." He put the dish in the drainer and picked up the next.

Dean chewed on the corner of his lip. "It's boring, Bobby. None of it has anything to do with real life."

Bobby smiled, glancing back at him. "For most people, all of it has to do with real life."

"We're not most people." Dean looked along the edge of the blade and set the stone onto the table. "And I'm never going to be like most people."

"You might want to get out of hunting, one day," Bobby suggested mildly.

"I won't." He stood up, turning around and looking at the man's back. "What we do is important. It saves lives. You think that working in some job somewhere is going to feel like that?"

"You think there's any rule that says you can't be a good hunter and have a few aces up your sleeve if you do want to change your mind one day?"

"I think I need to concentrate on what I want to do." Dean looked down at the essay he'd written for his English class. "No one thinks I can do this crap anyway." He screwed up the sheet and threw it on the floor, turning on his heel and walking out of the room.

Bobby watched him go, his eyes worried. He dried his hands and bent to pick up the discarded paper, smoothing it out and moving under the overhead light to read it. When he reached the end, he sighed. Sam was right. It was good. It was expressive and passionate and written with a feeling for the subject that seemed a lot older than the average thirteen year old. And why not, he thought suddenly, Dean was a lot older than the average thirteen year old in a lot of ways.

He sat down at the table and picked up the English notebook, flicking through it. The marks leapt out at him in red ink. At the first one, he read the work, his frown becoming deeper as he finished it, looking at the D that sat at the top of the page. He turned the page over and started the next one. He read right through the assignments of the last four weeks.

Dean's teacher was an asshole, he thought. There was no reason for those marks for that work and some of the comments scrawled over the pages were downright personal. He slid the essay inside the book and closed it, setting it back on the pile, and walked around the table and out in to the hall. The boys shared a room upstairs, but Dean had taken to going into the yard at night if he wanted to be alone. Bobby went out the back door and rounded the house, seeing the boy's outline silhouetted against the outside light of the workshop.

"Dean." He came up beside him, leaned against the panel of the Nova he was working on. "What's going on at school?"

Dean looked at him and shook his head. "I don't know. Guy hates me. Doesn't matter what I put in, or how much time I work on something, I never get better than a C, and …" He shook his head again.

"You do anything that might have gotten him POed at you when you started?" He had to ask, Dean had a bad habit of smart-mouthing off if a comment came at the right moment, thinking nothing of it at the time.

"No. I didn't say a word to anyone." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter, Dad'll be back in a couple of days and we'll be somewhere else."

Bobby closed his eyes. He was right. They would be gone. There would be a new town. A new school. He could see why the kid couldn't see the point of trying to learn. Between asshole teachers and the constant moving, he'd never seen any rewards for work put in at school.

"I don't want a normal life, Bobby," Dean's voice broke in the middle of the words, cracking high and then dropping low. He cleared his throat. "Nothing about me fits in anymore. Half the time I don't know what they're talking about, I'm always trying to catch up. I'm kind of sick of it."

"I can't argue with that, son. But look at this way, no one benefits your learning 'cept you. Makes no difference to the teachers, or the school, or your dad, or me. Only you. So whatever you can learn and take away with you, that's yours forever. They can't take that. You own it."

Beside him, he heard the soft sigh. "I guess."

"You don't have to impress anyone but yourself. But giving up, not trying, that's just shooting yourself in the foot, Dean. You're the only one who's going to lose out."

There was no question in Bobby Singer's mind that the boy leaning up against the blocked car beside him was smart. He'd seen Dean figure out plans for hunts, seen him break down mechanical problems, watched him work out electrical circuits that were more efficient and simpler than the commercial ones for the same purpose … and in the work he'd just read, there was more, more even than the pragmatic, logical bent Dean had. A depth and a way of seeing things that were … rare.

But, he thought tiredly, the boy wasn't going to believe that, not now, and maybe not ever.

He wondered when John would be back. He would talk to him about Sam, he decided. And about Dean, and maybe they'd be able to work out something.


	4. Chapter 4 Covington, 2000

_**Covington, Indiana, July 2000.**_

* * *

The diner was small, crowded and redolent with the smells of bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, burgers and coffee. Sam pushed his food around his plate, his appetite gone.

Dean had been fine for about a day after he and Dad had finally reached Blue Earth from Flagstaff. He'd been a bit subdued, but mostly fine. Then slowly, gradually, he'd started to withdraw. Now, his brother wasn't talking at all, at least not to him. He seemed to be wary around Dad as well, but at least he would talk and listen to him.

Watching him furtively from under the hair that flopped over his forehead, Sam could see that Dean's appetite wasn't any better than his own. There was still a sausage and a pile of bacon to one side of the plate.

He knew that his brother wasn't sleeping much. He'd been woken the last few nights by the nightmares, Dean's voice muttering in the darkness, the sounds of the covers being thrown back or falling to the floor. It didn't take a genius to figure out what he was dreaming about, to know what was bothering him. But he wouldn't talk about it.

Knowing what the problem was didn't help. Even knowing, pretty much, what Dean was feeling about it didn't really help. There was nothing either of them could do to change what had happened. He'd needed to get out and he'd gone, and he hadn't thought of how Dean would react, hadn't thought of his brother's overwhelming sense of responsibility for him, hadn't thought about his father's orders or even considered how he would deal with Dean when he found out.

And that wasn't the worst bit, he thought now, glancing up at the pale, drawn face on the other table again. The worst bit was that Dean knew why he'd gone, he'd understood why he hadn't thought of them, but it had broken something, deep inside of his brother, to realise that he didn't mean the same to Sam, as Sam meant to him.

He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back off his face and looked up.

"How long did Dad say he'd been on the side-trip?"

Dean kept his eyes on his plate. "He didn't."

"So, where are we meeting him again?" Sam tried again.

"Cut it out. You were there, you heard him." Dean stood abruptly and pulled his wallet out, tossing a couple of tens onto the table and grabbing his jacket. He was halfway out the diner when Sam caught up with him. The two of them were on their own. Their father was checking out another lead, but would meet them in Alabama in a couple of days' time. Sam strode out of the diner and down the street toward the Impala, watching his brother unlock it and get in, his face dark and closed.

Two days of silence between them, the rock music filling the car, right at the edge of bearable decibels. Two days of silence, sitting in motel rooms, the TV, if there was one, and if it was working, blaring away with no one really watching it. Two days of silence when they ate, Dean unable to look at him half the time, his face as shuttered as it was now, his eyes darkened with a pain that he couldn't or wouldn't let go.

Sam slid into the passenger seat and leaned back against the cool glass of the window. His whole life, from his earliest memories, his brother had looked after him, taken care of him, made sure he was fed, clean, dressed, rested, taught him to do … pretty much everything. Dean had stood between him and the creatures that had occasionally managed to find them when their father hadn't been around. He'd stood between him and their father when the rage had been spilling over and looking for something to bite. He'd been a constant, not always nice, not always friendly, but always there, and always, always at his back, someone to talk to, someone to listen, someone, sometimes, to cry with.

Even after all that time, Sam knew he still didn't really understand his brother. He knew the facts, he knew the habits and the tells and the expressions and the strengths and the weaknesses. But he didn't understand him. He didn't understand the unyielding loyalty to family. To Dad. He didn't understand the places in his brother where Dean had no armour at all, where he could be hurt so deeply that it would feel like a mortal wound. He'd seen him hurt, usually by Dad, rarely by the opposite sex, but he'd never really considered that anything could really get through the armour that his brother wore around him out of habit. And he hadn't known that that armour didn't exist for him.

He'd apologised and apologised and apologised, half a dozen times a day for weeks. It didn't help. After awhile Dean had told him to stop, had told him that he knew Sam hadn't meant it to turn out the way it had. And, in a drunken and overtired moment over a week ago, had told him that thing he'd always counted on, that Sam would do anything for him, as he would for his brother, had vanished the day he'd disappeared.

He still didn't understand it, really. Nothing had changed. He was the same person he'd always been. He didn't know how his taking off could have caused that break in Dean. There'd been times when his brother had walked out, driven out by frustration or pain or anger when the tension between the three of them had gotten too much. It was usually just an overnight thing, and he'd be back in the morning, maybe nursing a black eye or moving a bit stiffly with bruised ribs for a day or two, whatever frustration or anger he'd been feeling vented with a double dose of alcohol and a fight. He'd never actually packed up and left them, Sam had to admit.

He turned around, looking at his brother, mouth opening to say something, and Dean, seeing the half-formed movement in the corner of his eye, reached over to the stereo, his finger and thumb finding the volume control unerringly, twisting it hard to the right. Zeppelin filled the car, drowning out whatever Sam might have been about to say, pounding at their eardrums, making the windows hum in resonance with the insistent beat.

Sam looked at his brother's profile, outlined against the farmland they drove through, for a long moment, then turned away, resting his temple against the window, and staring out at the scenery.

* * *

It took Dean a little over ten hours to make the drive down to Alabama. They stopped twice for fuel and coffee and food. Sam realised the futility of trying to talk when the volume went back up to full after both stops, as soon as they hit the highway. He slept most of the way after the second time.

"Dad's case notes." Dean tossed the file at him and turned away, sitting down on the couch with another pile of files, notes and photocopies and photographs. He took the lid off his beer, drank a mouthful and set it down beside the papers on the low table, and started to read.

Sam looked at the beer and sighed. He got up and got one for himself, then opened the file and began to look through it, pretending that the heavy silence in the room was how they always worked.

* * *

After three hours, he had four pages of notes, a page of questions that needed to be followed up, a tension headache and his feelings had slowly mutated from wanting to make things right to a rising indignation that he was being punished for being who he was.

"You know, this isn't fair." He looked at Dean. His brother lifted his gaze from the pages he was reading and slowly turned to look at him. He should have recognised the warning in the half-lidded eyes, the ever-so-slight lift of one brow.

"I didn't change, Dean. I'm still who I was." Sam ignored Dean's silence. "You and Dad, you knew how important graduation was to me, you just didn't care."

Dean picked up the beer and tipped it up, swallowing the last mouthful, nodding. "So it's our fault you broke all our protocols, packed your bag and ran off like a little kid, Sam?"

He had the grace to look away, a line of red rising up his neck at the rebuke. "You've known for a long time that I don't want this life, Dean."

"Yeah. I know that." Dean looked back at the notes in front of him. "I didn't think you'd ditch us. Didn't think you'd be such an asshole that you'd just take off, no note, no explanation, just gone." He looked back at his brother, eyes narrowed and jaw tense. "Didn't think you'd leave me holding the bag, when you knew how freaked Dad has been about sticking together."

Sam stared back at him, chin raised defiantly. "If I told you that I wanted out you would have locked the friggin' door and not let me out of the house."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I would have."

"So what choice did you leave me?"

His brother laughed, a short, humourless bark. "You just don't get it, do you?"

The accusation stung. He did get it. He'd gotten it years ago. His father wanted revenge for the death of his wife. His brother idolised the man and was happy to become a younger version, without any thought of what that meant. He got it.

"I want a normal life, Dean. I want to be with normal people."

His brother's head snapped around at that, eyes dark and narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean, Sam?"

"It means that I'm not like you and Dad, and I don't want to be." Sam knew where to aim, for maximum damage. He saw an emotion cross Dean's face, too fast to decipher.

Dean stood up and walked to the door, grabbing his jacket from the hook and yanking it on.

"Where are you going?" Sam looked at him, seeing the stiffness in his movements.

"Out." Dean opened the door, walked out and slammed it shut. Sam looked at the keys still sitting on the cupboard next to the door.

* * *

At one a.m., he started to get worried. By two-thirty, he was pacing up and down the room, wondering if he should go looking for Dean. The fact that he'd left the car behind meant he'd gone to get drunk, Sam thought, but the bars around here would have closed long ago. His brother was predictable in many ways. He didn't stay the night when he went looking for a girl. He was always back, well before dawn. If not a girl, then what?

At three, he grabbed the keys and his jacket and went out, locking the door behind him and going to the Impala. He started the engine and backed out carefully, turning onto the street, cruising slowly. Start with the nearest bar, and work his way out from there, he thought, chewing on his lip.

* * *

He turned into the alley, the headlights lighting up the tableau near the other end, the men frozen in its beams. The engine's deep notes echoed from the brick walls as he pulled up, and Sam saw Dean lift his head, recognising the sound.

Popping the glove box, Sam pulled out the Taurus it held, and turned off the engine, leaving the headlights on. Three men stood in front of him, one holding the collar of his brother's jacket, one standing behind the others, cradling an arm. The third one was beside Dean, leaning over him. Sam saw the man's knuckles were grazed and bloody, the red bright in the car's lights. He saw the short length of pipe the guy was holding, half-raised above his brother.

Dean was half-kneeling, one eye swollen shut, the other rolling around to try and see past the bright light. There was a split over his nose, which now sat to one side, blood covering his mouth and chin and shirt front. Another split over one cheek was also bleeding freely. The jawline under the other cheek was swelling, mottled as the bruising started to come out.

"Sam?" Dean's voice was hoarse and uneven. "That you?"

"Step away from him." Sam raised the Taurus, levelling the barrel at the man with the pipe.

"You must be the douche bag kid brother." The man grinned at his friend and jerked his thumb at Dean. "Told us all about you, he did."

Sam ignored the comment, flicking the safety off. "I said, step away."

The other man let go of his brother's jacket, and Dean slumped to the ground, leaning back against the dumpster behind him, his open eye vivid in the bright light from the car, standing out against the darkness of the bruises rising around it, the red of the blood that was under it.

"You remind him we don't like smart-mouthed punks here, kid." The man with the pipe backed away slowly. "Like to get their faces rearranged if they show up again."

The men kept backing for several yards, then turned and walked to the other end of the alley, disappearing into the darkness. Sam watched them go, waiting until he could no longer hear their footsteps before he put the safety back on and tucked the big gun into his jacket pocket. He walked toward Dean, and crouched in front of him.

"Douche bag, eh?"

Dean's eye rolled toward him. "You are a douche bag."

"Lucky for you I came looking." He gripped his brother's forearm, and pulled back, hauling him to his feet, lifting one arm over his shoulders. Dean hawked back and spat out a mouthful of blood, tilting his head back as he stumbled beside Sam to the car.

Leaning him against the rear door as he got the passenger door open, Sam shot a worried look at him as he eased his brother inside. He closed the door and went around to the driver's side. He'd have to take him to Emergency, he thought. The nose was broken, and he couldn't reset it himself, not without leaving it crooked. He didn't know what other injuries Dean had and he wasn't sure it was a good idea to ask.

"Family sticks together, Sammy."

"What do you think I'm doing here, Dean?" He looked over at him sourly. Putting the car in reverse, he twisted around to back out of the alley and onto the street, turning right for the hospital. The car's engine rumbled as he shifted up through the gears, glancing at the huddled form beside him, eyes closed now. He looked back at the road, making a right hand turn when he saw the sign for the Emergency room.

"You're all I've got, man."

The words were very soft, and Sam touched the brake, looking over at him, not sure that he heard them right.

"I'm still here, Dean. I'm still your brother."

There was no answer, and Sam drove on, pulling into the slot next to the ER bay and shutting off the car. He reached out and shook Dean's arm, realising that he'd passed out when he got no response.

Maybe that was a good thing, he thought nervously, his mind replaying his brother's words, hearing again the misery underlying them. Maybe he'd forget this for a while.

As the orderlies lifted his brother onto the gurney and Sam followed them into the ER, he wondered if he'd ever understand Dean. Or his father. He wasn't like them, trying to ignore the faint flush of guilt that twisted through him at the disloyalty of that thought. It wasn't something he could anything about. He just wanted something different.


	5. Chapter 5 Decker, 2002

_**Decker, Montana. August, 2002**_

* * *

"Heads up, he's coming to." Clay looked across at the young man, bound tightly to the straight-backed wooden carver with rope around his chest, arms and ankles.

"Bout time," Mike said sourly, lifting the shotgun from his knees and cocking it.

Clay looked at the trickle of dried blood at the back of the man's head, then to his cousin. "You hit him pretty hard."

"Not as hard as I'm gunna." He watched the boy's eyes open slowly, focussing as he lifted his head.

"John Winchester's boy, ain't you?" He stood up, holding the shotgun casually in one hand. "The oldest one? Dean?"

Dean's brows drew together as he looked up at the man in front of him. "Who're you?"

Mike moved fast for a big man, the butt of the shotgun slamming against Dean's jaw and snapping his head to one side.

"Better get this straight right now, boy." Mike looked down. "I ask the questions, you answer them. Any lip and it'll all get a lot worse."

The young man spat out the blood in his mouth and looked back up, the pain shoved down behind the anger in his eyes.

Mike's lips rose in a half-smile, admiring the kid's balls. Wasn't so common no more. He thought Clay's brat would'a been pissin' his pants and bawling by now.

"Where's your dad at, kid?"

"Don't know."

"Wrong answer." Mike smacked the butt of the gun down on fingers that rested along the flat wooden arm of the chair and the three of them heard the crack as the bones broke. He watched the kid's face, saw the skin pale, the freckles stand out, heard the grinding of his teeth as he clamped tightly them together, forcing the scream back down his throat.

"You getting this, Clay?" Mike turned to his cousin with a grin. "How long ya think it'll take him to learn to answer proper?"

Clay shook his head. "Depends on how many brains he's got, Mike."

Mike looked back down at Dean, eyes narrowing very slightly. "Where's your dad at, Dean?"

He saw the younger man's face tighten slightly, wariness now in the green eyes instead of sass.

"He went to check out a lead on a case, in Billings. He'll be back in a couple of days."

"There now. Didn't take long at all." Mike grinned at him. "Must have a good set of brains in that thick skull of your'n."

The kid sat still, his left hand still flat against the arm of the chair, his right clenched into a fist.

"We looked around for your brother, as well," Clay said from the table a few yards away. "Couldn't find him."

Dean's head turned slowly to look at him, his face expressionless.

"Your dad, see, well he was poking his nose into things that didn't concern him. Killed our cousin, Frank. Can't let that go."

"That's enough of the history lesson, Clay. This boy don't need to know anything about our business."

Clay looked down at the gun he was cleaning. "Just didn't want him to think there was no reason for this, Mike."

"You're hunters?" Dean looked up at Mike.

"Yeah, we're hunters." Mike glanced at Clay. "And we hunt what we want."

He saw the slight line form between Dean's brows. "Don't think too hard, boy. It really ain't none of your concern."

The kid was silent, looking down at his fingers, the broken ones already starting to swell.

"So, where's your brother?"

He looked up quickly at the man next to him, and this time Mike saw a bright and shining fear in the green eyes, the sight bringing a small smile to his face.

"Come on, ain't got all day." He lifted the shotgun slightly and saw the kid swallow.

"College."

Mike whistled and turned to look at Clay. "Hear that, Clay? College." He looked back at Dean. "Well, whoopty-do. How come he got to go to college and you had to stay behind?"

"Not my thing."

Mike laughed. "Yeah, couldn't deal with it meself either." He leaned forward slightly. "And which college did young Sam Winchester go to?"

Dean looked away.

"I said, which college, boy?" Mike straightened up slightly, raising the gun again. "Don't make me break something else."

"UCLA." Dean looked down at the floor of the shed, shoulders slumping in defeat. "Got a scholarship."

"My, a scholarship. Guess he's the brains of the outfit, then." Mike turned away and walked to the table, picking up the beer he'd left there, sitting down in the chair. "Have to go and pay that boy a visit, after we're done here."

Clay looked at him, his forehead wrinkling slightly. "Mike, we don't have to do that."

"Sure we do, don't want to leave anyone behind who might get the old itch for vengeance."

He turned to look at Dean, feeling the kid's eyes on him. "What are you looking at, boy?"

Dean's gaze didn't waver. The pretty green eyes were cold and empty, the fear and the anger and the wariness all gone, Mike thought. For some reason, the look in them sent a slight shiver down his spine.

"Nothing." The boy's voice was as cold and flat as his eyes. "I might not have gotten Dad's travel plans exactly right."

Mike put the bottle down and leaned forward, hand tightening around the gun at the edge in the kid's voice.

"That so?" He stood up and walked back to him. "And what did you get wrong?"

"Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he said he was going to your place." Dean said slowly, tilting his head to one side to look up at him, one side of his mouth lifting a little. "Said your wife called him and told him to get over there 'cause she needed a man to fuck her."

Both hunters froze as the words sank in. Clay rolled his eyes.

"Oh, geez, kid you shouldn't a said that." He looked at Mike who was staring at the young man with a frightening intensity.

"Get me the can, Clay, from the back of the truck." Mike's voice was low and husky.

"Oh, no, Mike, c'mon, he was just tryin' to rile you," he said nervously, fiddling with the cloth he held. "He's just a kid."

"Right now, Clay, you do it or I'll blow a hole in you." Mike tore his gaze from the kid and looked at his cousin, the barrel of the shotgun swinging up and around.

Clay nodded, putting his rifle back on the table and dropping the soft cloth on top of it.

"You think you're smart, kid?" Mike turned back to Dean. "You think you gonna make it out of here alive?"

"No." Dean stared up at him, his face stony.

"Damned right you're not. But I'd have put a bullet in your brain, taken you out nice and clean and quick, before you said that. Now, it's gonna be something else altogether."

Clay came back in, holding a five gallon red plastic jerrican. Mike watched as Dean's eyes dropped to it, saw the tremor that shook through him.

"Yeah, something else entirely." He took the can and unscrewed the lid, dropping it onto the floor. The raw reek of gasoline filled the space.

Lifting the can over the kid's head, he started to pour.

The liquid splashed down over Dean's hair, soaking into his clothes. Ducking his head, he screwed up his eyes tightly, mouth compressing as the fuel ran over his face.

"Clay, get his head up." Mike growled at the other man as he continued to empty the can.

Clay picked up his gun, and walked to the front of the chair, jamming the end of the barrel under Dean's chin and thrusting it up. The gasoline sloshed in a river over his face, going up his nose, and into his mouth as he tried to clear it.

Mike put down the can and looked at him. The fuel had saturated his clothing, filled his boots and coated his skin. Dean shook his head, drops of the gas flying off as he tried to get it off his eyes.

"Now, Dean … where's your father really at?" Mike's voice was low and soft, as he reached into a pocket.

Dean opened his eyes, the lids red and swelling and raw, stinging as the gas trickled into the corners.

"Fuck you," he said quietly, staring into Mike's eyes.

Mike lifted the lighter from his pocket, flicking the lid open and holding it in front of the kid's face. With the fumes rising all around them, the first spark would ignite the boy.

"Open the doors, Clay," he called over his shoulder. "Don't wanna cook anyone but this here punk kid."

Looking back at the defiant expression of the Winchester boy, Mike raised a brow.

"You wanna rethink that answer?" He shifted his thumb to the wheel. "Maybe, take a second or so to think about what's gonna happen to you if I light this and drop it onto you?"

Dean's gaze dropped to the lighter, eyes slightly unfocussed as the pain in them increased. He shook his head again suddenly, droplets flying from his hair onto Mike.

"Yeah, sorry." He shifted his gaze back up to Mike's face. "Fuck you, bitch."

Mike's face twisted and he raised his hand, the thumb running the wheel and the flame lighting.

The gunshot thundered in the closed space, the heavy calibre bullet almost taking Mike's hand off at the wrist, sending the lighter backward into a pile of straw at the back of the shed.

He screamed when he saw half of his hand hanging limply from the broken bones of his arm, looked up and saw the man's outline silhouetted against the brightness of the sunshine outside.

"Clay, get him!"

Clay lifted the rifle, and fired, but the man had gone, moving fast into the shed and to the right, and the next shot took Clay in the side, ploughing through ribs and lungs and heart, exiting messily out his back. He dropped in a kind of slow motion, as if in disbelief, the rifle thudding onto the dirt.

"Goddamn it!" Mike dove for the table, grabbing his shotgun from the top, twisting violently to avoid landing on his injury. He hit the ground on his shoulder, the impact jarring the entire arm anyway, and he screamed again as the limp hand swung around, into the leg of the table. Holding the arm against his chest, he crawled from the table to the side of the shed, leaving a trail of blood.

John Winchester looked out from behind the engine block of the tractor he was using for cover, smelling smoke. The straw the lighter had landed in was aflame now, the fire greedily sucking at the air and dry plant matter, getting bigger by the second. He could smell the gasoline they'd poured over his son and his priorities changed instantly, drawing the long knife from the sheath at his belt and running doubled over for the chair.

"Dad?" Dean coughed, smelling the smoke in the shed, hearing the crackle of the flames as they worked through the straw, unable to see at all now.

"Yeah." John sliced downward and the ropes around Dean's chest fell free. He rammed the blade between the rope and the chair leg and yanked it back. "There's a big water tank outside, Dean. As soon as you're free, you get out there and get into it, alright?"

"I can't see."

John heard the fear in his son's voice, and felt his anger rise, clamping down on it savagely. "You're twenty paces from the door of the shed. The tank is another thirty paces past it, on the left. Shed's on fire."

Dean nodded, feeling the other ankle freed, his good hand lifting and wiping the gas from his face as the blade cut through the ropes. John pulled him out of the chair and spun him around, shoving him toward the door as he laid down a steady fusillade of cover fire in the direction he'd last seen Mike heading.

Dean stumbled out of the door, seeing the world change from a big dark blur to a big light blur. He started counting as he registered the change, bearing left.

* * *

John looked around the left wall of the shed, at the empty forty four gallon drums lined up there, the rolls of wire netting, reels of barb. He heard a soft crash as Mike shifted incautiously against a length of timber and it fell.

"Come on, John, you ain't gonna kill me in cold blood, are you?" Mike's voice came from the row of drums and John shifted his aim, seeing the top of the man's head moving slightly through the thick smoke that was filling the shed.

"No, I'm not going to kill you in cold blood," John agreed readily, the barrel of the .45 revolver tracking the man as he crawled behind the drums.

"I knew it." Mike peered cautiously out from behind the last barrel.

John's finger tightened on the trigger smoothly, and the bullet punched through the empty barrel and into Mike's leg. He screamed and fell out from behind the barrel onto the dirt.

"I'm just gonna make sure you can't out of here, and let you burn to death, you goddamned sonofabitch," John added conversationally as he walked up to him. He put a second bullet through the other leg and looked down at Mike's face, trying to keep the surge of dark satisfaction at the tears and sweat that coated it back behind his mental walls. If he enjoyed this too much, he'd be no better than the animal in front of him.

"I told you not to come after me, Mike. I told you to keep your nose clean and get your act together." He crouched down, reloading the revolver.

"You can't tell us what to do!" Mike snarled, a disbelieving anger breaking through the fear.

"Sure I can." John looked down at him. "You don't grab my son and try to burn him alive. Not and expect to get away with it."

He stood up, and saw Dean standing in the doorway, still dripping, this time with water. Even with the light behind, John could see the raw patches on his son's face and arms, where the gas had irritated the skin. The boy's eyes were swollen almost shut, red and bruised-looking.

The fire had spread to a pile of dry lumber at the back of the shed now, and the flames were roaring with a real voice. It was time to go.

"You're not a hunter, Mike. You're a sociopath. A monster. And I kill monsters."

He turned away, ignoring the screaming curses of the man lying on the ground behind him, and walked over to his son.

"Come on, better get you cleaned up."

Dean looked past him, into the inferno at the back of the shed, at the blurry outline of the man lying on the dirt to one side. Then he turned and helped his father pull the big sliding door shut.

* * *

John pulled a blanket from behind the seat of the truck and wrapped it around Dean's shoulders, frowning a little as he saw the shivers that seemed to ripple continuously through him.

"Get in. I've got some stuff to get the gas out of your eyes back at the room."

Dean climbed into the truck with a one-handed awkwardness and John looked over at him, his face hardening as he noticed the way the boy was cradling his hand against his chest. The shivering hadn't dissipated.

"Get it out, Dean. While it's still fresh."

Dean shook his head. "I'm alright. Just another near-miss, right?"

"No. This is the sort of thing you don't try and push off, son." John's frown deepened as he turned to face him. "You thinking about what nearly happened, or what I did to them?"

"I don't have a problem with what you did." Dean closed his eyes, tipping his head back to rest against the seat. "I should have been more aware. Shouldn't've let them get me."

In the driver's seat, John let out his breath. "This isn't your fault, Dean. I'm the one who brought this on."

He watched his son's face, the flickering expressions that flashed across it. "Dean?"

"They were going to go to get Sammy," Dean said, his voice very quiet. "Even if I told them where you were."

John realised why his oldest was shivering. He could face death for himself, could probably even face the death of his father. But not his little brother. Not Sammy. They'd both been kidding themselves that Sam was safe, away from them, out of the life. The recognition that he might not be had finally hit Dean.

"Sam's okay," he said, knowing it wasn't enough.

"Yeah. I know." The deep resignation in his voice said something different.

"I, uh, gotta go to Seattle," John said, turning back to the wheel and starting the truck's engine. "Got a lead on something over there. We could swing by, make sure he's, you know, okay."

He heard Dean's long exhale, and nodded to himself.

"Yeah, we could do that," Dean said softly.

He'd known, for some time now, that his oldest boy had taken every responsibility he'd been given as a matter of life and death. Had known that for Dean, keeping Sam alive was the only thing that mattered. He hoped that Sam knew that.

Turning the wheel, he drove out of the dirt yard, glancing at the rear-view mirror as the building behind them was completely engulfed in flame, the smoke reaching like a pillar into the sky.

He thought he might've been kidding himself, thinking he could protect them from everything, thinking he could train them well enough to protect themselves. They had grown up worse than military brats. Discipline. Rules. Hard training in everything he'd thought they'd needed. It wasn't enough. Not for the enemies he'd made, for what was hunting them, for the life he'd dragged them into.


	6. Chapter 6 Cape Girardeau, 2006

_**Cape Girardeau, Missouri, 2006**_

* * *

Cassie stood by the river, watching the boats move slowly north and south along the broad stretch, the strong smells of the cannery cut by the scent of diesel as a boat filled her tanks at the dock.

She wondered about the last four days, the chance to say sorry, the chance to be together again. Had it been predestined? She'd kept his number, through three changes of purses; taking it out, looking at it, putting into the new purse along with the photos and her cards. What did that tell her?

And he'd come. When she'd called for help, he'd come straight away.

Whatever had been between them, back in Ohio, was as strong now as it had been then, but nothing had changed. Dean was still committed to his job, she was still committed to her life. There was no room between those things for each other. She crossed her arms against the chill of the wind off the water and sighed.

Was there anything real there? The chemistry was real, there was no doubting that, but it didn't have anything to do with a relationship, with being able to share everything, with feeling free enough to be herself. She'd been in love, really in love, in the years since she'd seen him. Had been in love and had lost it and she knew that this, this thing between them, wasn't that. She wasn't sure it could ever become that, either.

He hadn't told her much, really, about his life. There were huge chunks that he skirted around, pretending not to hear questions about them, or changing the subject, or just distracting her with a kiss or caress whenever she got too near. She thought he wanted to tell her more, but for some reason just couldn't. The same way he thought there was something deeper between them, some connection that wasn't just biology.

He was a mass of contradictions, really. He cared about her, she knew that. He was deferential to her in ways that obviously surprised his brother, Sam, which had made her wonder about the other girlfriends that Sam had seen him with. Yet he clearly called the shots with Sam. He agreed readily to being open, to being honest, but persistently avoided any conversation about his past, except the past they shared. He'd said that telling her about himself, even the small amount he had, had been a first. It would explain why he thought … what he thought about them, she supposed.

When she'd watched his face, lying next to him in her bed, he looked … pensive. Going over things in his mind as if he were trying to make two and two equal five. He didn't look happy, didn't look contented for even a few minutes, but he would only talk vaguely around what he was obviously thinking about so hard. She should have told him, she thought now, told him that chemistry and wanting to be with someone didn't equate necessarily to loving someone, didn't mean that what they shared was permanent or real.

When they'd been together in Ohio, and even here, there were times when all she wanted was to be with him. To not let him out of her sight, beyond her physical reach. A part of that was the sex, she knew. But a part of it wasn't. That yearning to be closer was the beginnings of something else. The problem was it couldn't get any air, couldn't develop any further without time and he'd already told her he had to go.

* * *

"Cassie."

She turned her head at the deep voice behind her, and smiled at him, leaning back against his chest as his arms slid around her and his mouth pressed a soft kiss against the side of her neck.

"Car's parked on the other side," he said but he didn't move. She waited, knowing he wanted to say something else, was having difficulty in finding the words.

"I don't want to go," he murmured next to her ear. She nodded.

"But you have to."

She felt him pull away, slowly, reluctantly, and turned to look at him. He was looking down, that conflicted, pensive look back on his face. Two and two would never equal five, she wanted to tell him, but she didn't say anything.

After a moment, he turned and she turned with him, walking next to him, both of them watching the splintery grey timbers under their feet.

He had changed, quite a lot from the last time, she realised, glancing obliquely at him as they walked, from the corner of her eye. A lot of the fun in him had gone, or perhaps had just been overridden by his life. He was still decisive, still sure of himself. He was a little harder now. He hadn't talked about the intervening years much and her primary impression was that when he was with her, he wanted to only live in the present, no past, no future, just right now. She understood that desire but it meant that they couldn't go any further.

She felt the silence growing between them, a silence full of things that they both wanted to say but couldn't. What could you say when there was no time and no future?

As they rounded the corner of the building, they came off the wooden dock and onto the road and there was the car, shining black in the sunshine and Sam inside, waiting to get going. Subtle, she thought, ducking her head. He really was going.

"My mother said to say thanks again." She glanced at him. It was a long way from what she wanted to say but there was a pressure there now, that stopped her from talking about what was real.

He nodded absently, stopping as they came level with the car.

She looked at him, her chest tightening. "This is a better goodbye than last time."

Dean looked away, a half-smile tugging at the side of his mouth and disappearing. "Yeah, well, maybe this time it will be a little less permanent."

Looking up at him, his eyes narrowed against the brilliance of the sunlight on the water beside them, she realised that it wouldn't. Her throat closed up as she saw an inkling of that knowledge in his face. Whatever it was, those feelings that were between them, it wasn't enough. It would never be enough. The thought was painful enough to bite.

"You know what?" She smiled slightly, a reflex, not a feeling. "I'm a realist. I don't see much hope for us, Dean."

Swallowing hard against the tears that rose suddenly with those words, she saw the small flinch at them cross his face, his gaze staying on her as he fought against the knowledge she was sure he felt too.

"Well, I've seen stranger things happen." He looked down at her and Cassie saw his expression smooth out, a smile lift one side of his mouth. "A helluva lot stranger."

What did it mean when you could feel your heart breaking over something that you weren't sure had ever existed? She watched him struggle with the feelings that showed too clearly in the green depths of his eyes, and the sight hurt as much as what she had to say.

"Goodbye, Dean."

She didn't want to say it, not in that way, but it came out anyway. The truth, she thought much later, from somewhere deep inside of her.

"I'll see you, Cassie." It was a promise, to himself, maybe. She wondered if he knew that it was a promise he couldn't keep. "I will."

He meant it, she thought. He might or might not know that it was impossible, but he meant it. She nodded gently and stepped close to him. His arms slid around her and she kissed him softly, saying goodbye in that other way as well. Not a deep kiss, not a kiss to arouse desire, but a gentle and wanting kiss that wouldn't leave either of them with an ache, except for that ache in their hearts.

When she pulled back, she saw his vulnerability again. A longing for a different ending, and she saw that he knew that no matter how much he might want things to work out, they couldn't. It was there, in his eyes, finally. She watched him swallow it, watched that raw pain vanish from his face as he ran his hand lightly down her arm and stepped back.

In that moment, the very last of her hope disappeared as well. She hadn't even known she'd felt that hope until it was gone. The hope that he might choose his feelings over his duty. He got into the car and looked at her, fingers lifting slightly as Sam started the engine.

It wasn't until they'd pulled away that she realised he'd gotten what he needed. Resolution. Closure. She glanced back at the taillights of the black car, then turned away, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat.

She'd hurt him in Ohio. She'd known it at the time, too scared and angry to think about it then, and she'd seen it when he'd shown up, his gaze as greedy for her as hers had been for him, but a yawning chasm of wariness between them. He'd been carrying that wound around with him for a long time, and she wondered why he'd never been able to forget it, to let it go.

The same reason she'd kept his number? The same reason she knew that she would throw it out when she got back to her place? He'd meant his promise, about seeing her again, but it wouldn't happen. They'd finished their unfinished business, had looked on what had happened between them with perspectives that life had changed for them and now, she thought, they could both heal.

Looking out at the river, she rubbed her fingertips lightly over her temple, wondering if he would realise that.


	7. Chapter 7 Sioux Falls, 2007

_**Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2007**_

* * *

Bobby stared at Sam, filling up the doorway, smiling down at him. He felt his heart lurch awkwardly in his chest and he turned his head slowly to look at Dean, standing behind him, his gaze fixed to the wooden porch boards. Dread rose up through Bobby like a cold, black fire.

"Hey, Bobby," Dean said to the floor at Bobby's feet.

"Hey, Bobby." Sam looked nervously at him, and Bobby pushed down at the feelings that were rising like a whirlwind inside of him, forcing himself to focus on the young man.

"Sam. It's good to see ... you up and around." He stood back, opening the door wider.

"Yeah, well ... thanks for patching me up." Sam walked past him into the house. Bobby's gaze returned to Dean.

"Don't mention it."

Dean kept his head down, eyes on the floor as he walked quickly past Bobby, for reasons Bobby knew all too well. He stopped behind his brother, glancing over his shoulder. "Well, Sam's better. And we're back in it now, so ... what d'you know?"

The shabby, comfortable living room was dim, even with the curtains opened and the lights on. Outside, the grey light was flat and thin and wasn't giving any more warmth than it did light.

Bobby followed them into the room, his teeth grinding slightly with the effort of keeping what he wanted to say and do back down under his control. Sam obviously had no idea, and Dean was pretending his ass off, and Bobby knew he'd have to get the elder Winchester alone before he could get the confirmation for his fear.

"Well, I found something. But I'm not sure what the hell it means." He looked at them, waving a hand in the direction of his desk.

Sam asked. "What is it?"

"Demonic omens...like a frickin' tidal wave. Cattle deaths. Lightning storms. They skyrocketed from out of nowhere. Here." He picked up the map that was lying on the desk, turning it around and unfolding it to show the western states. Wyoming was in the centre. His finger swirled over the bulk of the state, then tapped on the southern edge. "All around here, except for one place ... southern Wyoming."

"Wyoming?"

"Yeah. That one area's totally clean - spotless. It's almost as if ..."

Sam looked up from the map to the man when Bobby trailed off. "What?"

Bobby hesitated, the thought still too big for him to want to deal with, to accept. Demons in these numbers, acting together … that was way out of his experience. Hell wasn't that organised. "The demons are surrounding it."

"But you don't know why?" Dean asked.

Bobby looked at him, and realised this was a good opportunity. Never let a good opportunity go by, he thought. "No, and by this point my eyes are swimming."

He turned to Sam. "Sam, would you take a look at it? Maybe you could catch something I couldn't."

Sam frowned slightly. "Yeah, sure."

"C'mon, Dean." Bobby glanced over at Dean. "I got some more books in the truck. Help me lug 'em in."

He turned without waiting for him, heading for the yard door.

* * *

It was two in the morning when he finally got to his bedroom, sinking down on the edge of the bed and staring at the wall. Ellen's arrival, and the information she'd brought had wiped everything else out and they'd spent the last few hours talking, planning, figuring out the best way to deal with the situation in Wyoming.

Now, he could think again.

_Dean._

The boy had been eight years old when Bobby had met John Winchester, and they'd teamed up for a case in Idaho. Sam had been four, and Bobby had seen Dean's devotion to his little brother, the way he'd put himself between the trickster god they'd been hunting and the little boy.

For seven years, they'd been semi-regular visitors to his house, dropped off when John needed to leave them somewhere safe as he'd tracked the yellow-eyed demon around the country. Seven years, watching them grow up, teaching Dean about cars, teaching them both about hunting and tracking, taking care of them … being a father to them, if only for short periods. He'd heard about Dean's first kiss and Sam's first hundred percent on a test, he'd comforted them through nightmares and disappointments, celebrated with them in their successes.

He'd watched Dean failing to deal with his grief, when his father had sacrificed himself. Watched him trying to work on the car, to pour that pain and anger and fear into the metal and leather and rubber. He wouldn't talk about it, wouldn't show it to anyone, not even his brother.

Coming out of the house at a run when he'd heard the sounds of breaking glass and the shriek of metal on metal, Bobby remembered stopping dead in the shadows of the porch, his heart racing as he'd watched the young man demolish half of what he'd done on that car, one day when the pressure had gotten past what he could hold and it had spilled out, rage and pain and fear mixed together in a destructive blast. The fury, the way he'd seemed driven and lost, it had scared him, scared him for what being held inside of Dean, what was being locked up and never allowed out.

_Dad brought me back, Bobby. I'm not even supposed to be here. At least this way, something good could come out of it, you know? It's like my life could mean something._

How had Dean ever come to feel that way? He'd yelled at him, and he supposed that hadn't done much good, his stomach heaved slightly as he recalled the way the young man had flinched away from his words.

John may have put too much on them, when they were kids, especially onto his eldest, but Dean had so much to be proud of … hell, his father had been proud of him, even he knew that. Why hadn't that taken?

He looked down at his hands, twisted together on his lap. Even from a young age, Dean'd been sensitive, able to see the adult emotions and cross-currents in the conversations around him, able to pick up accurately how people were feeling, and often why. God knows, John had not been able to keep his more destructive emotions under lock and key all the time, and the boys must have seen a lot more than he had of the man's fear-driven anger and desperate pain over the years of living in close quarters. Had John lashed out at Dean?

_The way he lashed out at you, you mean?_ The voice in his head queried. That memory was still painful, as much for what he'd done wrong in the moment as for John's bitterly cruel response.

He tipped his head back, eyes closing as he thought about what that might have done to the boy who had tried so hard to bury his own personality and be more like his father.

_I couldn't let him die, Bobby._

The agony in that sentence had cut him down to the quick, and he'd understood the boy's feelings, he really had. For Dean, protecting Sam was the foundation stone in his life. It shouldn't have been, but it was. Dean had no more choice in the matter than he'd had picking the colour of his eyes.

He got up, leaving his boots by the door and padded down the stairs in his socks. Ellen was sleeping in the guest room, Sam had the boys' old bedroom in the upstairs corner. Dean had picked the long couch in the living room.

* * *

The room was shadowed, barely lit by the fire that was dying on the hearth. Bobby walked over to the couch, unsurprised to see Dean's eyes open, his big frame hunched up and doubled-over at one end.

He detoured to the desk and picked up the bottle that was a permanent fixture on it and two of the glasses they'd used earlier. The armchair sat kitty-corner to the couch, and Bobby dropped into it, setting the glasses along the arm and unscrewing the cheap bourbon's lid, pouring out a couple of fingers and passing one glass to Dean.

Dean accepted the glass and looked down into the amber depths, not meeting the older man's gaze.

"Dad told me to protect Sam," he said, his voice very soft and a little higher than usual. He sounded like the boy he'd been, Bobby thought, his heart contracting.

"I know." Bobby put the bottle on the floor beside him and picked up his glass, swallowing a mouthful of the raw whiskey. "He also said you might have to kill him, if the powers got too much for him."

Dean's head snapped up, his mouth parting slightly in surprise. Bobby shook his head at him.

"Me and John were close before he blew up, Dean," he said quietly. "John was driven by that demon, and he knew what was in store for Sam, for you, for himself."

He leaned forward a little in the chair. "Your dad was a strong man, Dean, stronger than most. But he made a lot of mistakes over the years, mostly with you."

He watched the young man shake his head and felt the corner of his mouth tug upwards, the smile half-resigned and utterly without humour.

"He did his best for us," Dean murmured, lifting his own glass and drinking quickly.

"Yeah. No argument." Bobby nodded. "But his best sometimes missed the mark. You protected Sam his whole life. But that ain't all you are, Dean. And you're not your dad."

Dean turned away, mouth twisting. "Doesn't leave much, Bobby."

"Leaves everything that's important, boy." Bobby reached out, gripping his forearm. "Leaves who you are. And what you want to be."

He saw expressions chase each other across the young man's expressive face, then saw them shut down, his eyelids dropping, that little shake preceding the duck of his head.

"Doesn't really matter anymore, does it?"

Bobby frowned, his fingers clenching around the thick glass as he struggled against the anger that surged up inside of him. He didn't know where it came from or why … it was partly an anger at John Winchester, partly at God, partly at himself, for not being able to do something earlier. "Matters more than ever."

"Sam's alive." Dean looked up at him, and he wasn't surprised, only saddened to see the shimmer over the green eyes that stared into his. "And I'm okay with that."

"I know you are. What I want to know is why?" Bobby stared back at him. He could still see the eight-year old, looking out from the depths of those eyes. "Why is your life so much less important than anyone else's, Dean?"

He watched as the young man dropped his gaze again, saw him swallow several times, and finally shake his head.

"Dean." He was pushing, he knew, and sometimes that wasn't a good idea with the kid, but he had to, this time. "Dean, why?"

"I wasn't supposed to be here, Bobby." His voice, usually deep, was higher, and strained. "If I'd died when I was supposed to, back in Nebraska, none of this would have happened. Dad would have been there to protect Sam. He wouldn't have failed."

Bobby watched as he lifted his head, his breath hitching as he fought against the sob in his chest, tipping it back and wiping impatiently at the tears that spilled over the lids. He dropped his gaze to his glass, giving the boy some time to regain the control that he tried so hard to keep.

There was a hard sniff and he looked up. The light from the table lamp caught the ripples in the amber whiskey in Dean's glass, the liquid agitated by the tremor that passed from young man's hand. He felt his throat close as he looked at him, seeing a mixture of pain and regret, guilt and doubt, filling the young man's eyes, contorting his features.

"Dad died for me, and all it did was make e-e-everything worse," Dean said, his voice breaking slightly.

"That's a load of crap." Bobby's fingers closed tightly around Dean's arm, biting in. "He knew that you were strong, strong enough to keep fighting the demon, to look after Sam –"

"And I _didn't_! I _wasn't_!" Dean pulled his arm free, sliding across the couch, away from him, his head ducking as his voice broke again, strained with anguish. "I lost him, Bobby. I didn't – I couldn't –"

"Son, that wasn't on you." Bobby heaved in a deep breath. _How in hell did the boy think he could've prevented any of that from happening?_ "Your know your dad couldn't have done any better –"

"No, I don't know that," Dean muttered softly. "I don't know that."

"Well, ya should," Bobby told him. "John wasn't Superman, Dean. No one could've stopped that demon from grabbing Sam – hell, you were the one who found him –"

"Too late."

"Dean –"

"I _will_ kill that yellow-eyed sonofabitch, Bobby. I will." Dean finished the whiskey in his glass, tossing it back in a single swallow, his face hardening, his eyes glittering suddenly with a cold, bleak fury.

"But I can't think about this – an' I can't talk about it. I can't do my job if I think about this."

The directive was clear.

Bobby let out his breath slowly. "Alright."

He watched the young man turn away, Dean's eyes closing, and he got to his feet. Another thing locked down, he thought, putting his glass down on the desk and turning for the door. Another wound that wasn't going to heal.

"Dean –?"

"Get some sleep, Bobby," Dean said, without opening his eyes or looking around, his voice low and defeated. "Long drive tomorrow."

"Right."

Walking out of the room, Bobby wondered how many wounds Dean could take, before he was nothing but scar tissue, unable to do anything but hunt down the things that lived in the dark. There was a streak, a vein, of caring in the young man, unlooked at, he thought, but there. It drove Dean. Lashed at him to do the right thing, no matter what the cost. It would be worn away by too much pain … by too many things that he thought were failures.

Sighing as he climbed the stairs, he wondered how to get that across to the eldest Winchester. Get it across before it was too late.


	8. Chapter 8 Point Judith, 2007

_**Point Judith, Massachusetts 2007**_

* * *

"You get the stuff, we'll meet you at the cemetery." Dean looked at Sam, and his brother nodded.

Bela looked at him, finding it hard to reconcile the decisive man she saw in front of her with the easy-to-goad eldest Winchester she was used to. Dean turned to her, gesturing abruptly at the door.

"Let's go."

She hurried out, walking around the front of the car and getting into the passenger seat as he slid into the driver's side, watching him from the corner of her eye. He started the engine, put the car in reverse and got them onto the street and heading west.

"You're a different person when you know what you're doing."

Dean kept his eyes on the road, ignoring the inherent barb. "Lucky for you."

"Yeah." She caught her lower lip between her teeth, recognising that he wasn't going to respond to her taunts, unsure of why she was still throwing them out. "I'm sorry. I get snarky when I'm anxious."

That did get her a swift sideways glance. "You're snarky all the time."

"You're an easy target."

"Doesn't mean you have to keep firing, you know."

She looked at him, seeing his mouth twist slightly. "I'm aware."

He drove fast, and handled the car as if it were an extension of his own body, his concentration focussed, yet his awareness of the conditions spread far out. She wondered absently if he'd wanted to be a racing driver, when he'd been a little boy, before hunting had consumed his life, his dreams.

They reached the cemetery and Dean pulled into the small lot, cutting the engine and staring into the darkness. As cloud drifted overhead, the full moon appeared, dappling the car and lot under the canopy of the trees, lighting the tombstones and statues in cold white light, outlined and emphasised by the deep black shadows.

She could see him struggling with something, sitting there beside her, his gaze on the scene painted in front of them. When he finally turned his head to look at her, she wasn't surprised. No matter what she'd done, no matter what she'd said to him, she knew that at his core, in the deepest part of him, he couldn't turn away, not when he'd been asked for help.

"How could you hurt your family?" The question was soft, uncertain.

A part of her was a little surprised at the bewilderment in his voice. He was a hunter, and he'd seen much of the worst that lived in the world. But he was still naïve, still innocent about the things that people did to each other, with no excuse of being turned or tainted.

"Not everyone has the same family, Dean." It was as close as she could come to telling him. It was closer than she'd ever gotten before, with anyone.

He chewed on the corner of his lip, brows drawn together a little. "They're still your family, Bela."

She turned away, feeling her heart thump hard against the base of her throat. She could feel his eyes on her, his doubt and mystification. Family, she knew, was unambiguous to Dean Winchester. Her dossier on him was several inches thick, the information gathered over the last couple of years making interesting reading. But family was his touchstone, the one thing he was absolutely clear on, that he would kill or die for without a second's hesitation.

She couldn't talk about hers. Or her past. Or her memories. She couldn't ever explain to him that people who were monsters also had families. He might have understood, she thought. He was one of a very few who had pushed a little at her, wanted to know why. But she couldn't let it out of the locked cell she kept it in, a cell without doors that kept her sane, most of the time. Not without a good reason, not without a reason that would override her reactions.

She heard him draw in a deep breath, his jacket whispering against the seat as he shifted his position, turning away, looking outside again, and she closed her eyes.

She was aware that she had been pushing at him since they'd met. Taking the rabbit's foot, taking his winnings from the luck that had brought him, shooting his brother even. Nothing she'd done had made him push back hard enough. Hard enough to break through, to make her fear him more than her past. He was, she thought, with a hint of derision, a good guy. And perhaps, in spite of his interest, in spite of the compassion that seemed to drive him sometimes, he was private in the same way she was, and couldn't bring himself to go that extra mile.

She wondered what it would take, to push him there. More than what she'd already done. Her time was running out. And his too. But she couldn't ask. She couldn't tell him, or anyone, without something to overcome the fear, something more frightening to help her face it.

If Sam's spell didn't work tonight, it would all be too late. She would hear the hounds coming for her soul the minute she drowned. Dean and Sam wouldn't. They wouldn't know about the deal, about the truth. She didn't know why that mattered to her, not now, but for some reason it did.

"What's the most frightening thing that ever happened to you?" She turned back to him, seeing him start slightly at the sudden question.

He glanced at her and away again, his answer coming reluctantly. "Losing my mom."

He didn't know why he'd told her, she thought, and she didn't know why either. There was something at play between them, some struggle, some connection that faltered and came and went without either of them knowing how or why.

"You lost everything that night, didn't you?" She didn't even know why she was asking. She knew his history, knew what had happened. Pushing at him. Prodding. Looking for the reaction that would – what? – save her? Save him?

He frowned, turning slowly to look at her. "How do you know about that?"

"People talk. It's not difficult to find out things if you've got time and money and patience," she said, careful to keep her tone casual. Like most negotiations, it was a subtle dance, one that she knew the steps to and he didn't.

"Why would you want to?"

She smiled slightly. "I find out everything about anyone I have dealings with, Dean. It's just habit."

The dark brows drew closer together. "We don't have 'dealings', Bela."

"Are you going to answer the question or quibble semantics, Dean?" She crossed her legs, watching him.

"I'll answer yours if you answer mine," he said, and she could see that it bothered him, both that he wanted an answer and that he was reaching out to her. He didn't know why either, she thought. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like. To just say it out loud. To tell someone and get the screams out of her head and into the real world. What would he do? Be sympathetic? Accuse her of lying? Either or both would leave her more vulnerable than she could stand, she thought, a fine tremor coursing through her. Her hands closed into fists to hide it.

"I can't." She looked down. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Right." Disbelief evident in his voice now. "I don't know why I even try to talk to you."

"There's a part of you that wants to believe that I can be saved, changed," she said.

The silence between grew, and she knew without having to look at him that she'd gotten that right, and she'd surprised him.

"Why would I care about saving you, Bela?"

His voice was very soft, and she looked over at him, meeting his eyes. "I don't know."

He looked away. She sighed softly. He was the right one, maybe the only one who would be able to break through, but he hid things from himself, didn't look at the things that made him uncomfortable, or try and work out why that was. The deal, or maybe the decision to make the deal, had changed something in the way he saw himself. She'd seen it in him, that odd lack of decisiveness when it came to anything that might go either way. Until tonight she hadn't seen what he must have been like before that moment, clear in his head about what had to be done, unafraid of doing it. She wondered if she'd met him before, if he'd have pushed harder when she pushed at him.

The thought was irrelevant and she dropped it. He was as he was.

"Life doesn't work out the way we expect it to, does it?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, his voice edged with suspicion again.

"Nothing." She shook her head. "I just mean, for a long time I tried to live without regrets, but now, I find I have a few."

"Didn't think you knew the meaning of the word." He looked at her, his expression shadowed. "Or remorse."

"That's right, Dean, I don't," she snapped at him, irritated with him again. It was irrational, that irritation. She'd never made it easy for him. For either of them. It wasn't her nature. She'd fought all her life to get what she needed. She couldn't hand out freebies. "What about you? Do you regret that your father made a deal and went to Hell so that you could live?"

He moved so fast that she didn't have time to get an arm up or do anything other than cower under him, staring into his eyes, a few inches from her own, his forearm pressed hard against her throat. She heard the harsh rasp of his breath in his throat.

"How the fuck do you know that, Bela?"

"The spirits talk, Dean. I know a lot about a lot of things." She dragged in a little air, fighting to get enough past the pressure of his grip. "You hunters don't even know how to get the information that you could use."

His eyes narrowed and she could see he wanted to throw that comment back at her, point out some moral high ground as if she didn't know what morality was. It was difficult to believe in morality when justice was never served and the innocent suffered more profoundly than their tormentors.

_Was this the moment?_ She could feel her heart racing in her chest, feel the adrenalin coursing through her body. If he pushed her now, would she finally be able to answer him?

She wanted to cry when she heard his breathing change, slow and soften, the pressure against her throat easing off as he moved away from her. _No, you were so close, so goddamned bloody close_, the thought was a like a scream inside of her.

"Why would you want to push me, Bela?" He stared at her warily, and she straightened up, applauding his suspicions even as she raged against his control.

"Some things need pushing to see the light of day, Dean." She rubbed her fingertips over the soreness on her neck. "Sometimes we all need a hard push, to get past whatever we're afraid of."

He frowned at her, clearly not understanding what she was talking about, or perhaps not wanting to. He was the only one who'd even come close and perhaps she'd been kidding herself all this time. Perhaps his deal had made him too afraid to push anyone.

"Never mind." She turned her head as the splash of headlights came down the road. "Your brother's here."

He glanced behind her, through the rear windows. "Let's get this over with."


	9. Chapter 9 South Bend, 2008

_**South Bend, Indiana, January 2008**_

* * *

She watched him from the shadows, standing in the parking lot. Saw him draw in a deep breath, and let it out, and knew what he was thinking. Fresh air. Free air. _You can't breathe in enough to last you for eternity_, she thought.

The lights flickered and went out, flickered again and came back on, he turned toward her and she knew he'd seen her, standing there. He walked toward her slowly, a little wary, a little puzzled, a lot confused.

"So the devil may care after all, is that what I'm supposed to believe?" He stopped on the concrete walkway, looking at her.

Dean Winchester.

She'd been watching them both for a while now. Dean was the key to Sam. And Sam was the key to Dean. And Dean would be a tough nut to crack. Unlike his younger brother, Dean had a wide streak of suspicion, running right through him. Trust had to be earned with him, it was never just given.

"I don't believe in the devil," Ruby said lightly.

"Wacky night." He walked down the steps toward her, and she could feel his paranoia, rising off him like fog off a river. "So let me get this straight, you were human once, you died, you went to Hell, you became a ..."

"Yeah."

She turned away and started walking, listening for him behind her.

"How long ago?"

She took another step and stopped, knowing that he was at least half-way hooked now. The thing with Dean was that under the growling, scowling exterior, there was another man. A man of unimaginable depths, who had no idea as to who he really was. He'd spent too many years trying to become someone else to know. He felt everything, and he felt it deeply. He saw things, connected things, sensed things but had no framework to set those insights to work. And he was afraid of what he could feel, when it didn't relate to getting the job done.

"Back when the plague was big."

Dean walked slowly toward her. She could hear the scrape of the asphalt under his boots, the rustle of his clothing, getting closer.

"So all of 'em, every damn demon, they were all human once?" he said it as if he were just checking the facts, but she knew he was stalling, for time, time to think about it, time to relate to it.

Ruby turned, softening her voice. "Every one I've ever met."

"Well, they sure don't act like it."

He didn't like talking to her, she knew. He didn't like demons, period. And he couldn't understand what had motivated her to save his life, not just this time either, but all the other times as well. And he really didn't like that, not knowing why she did what she did for them. The obvious explanation just wasn't flying to this man. It wasn't rational and it wasn't logical, and he wasn't either. She needed to meet him on an emotional level.

She looked up at him, knowing that this time, this moment, was the critical one. If she could get him to believe her, get him to – well, not trust her, because that was an impossibility for him – understand that she had goals that aligned with theirs, he would be her most important ally with Sam. "Most of them have forgotten what it means, or even that they were. That's what happens when you go to Hell, Dean. That's what Hell is. Forgetting what you were."

He looked away, and she could see that at least half of him believed, despite the rolled eyes, the derisive expression. For the first time, perhaps, he was letting himself think about it.

"Philosophy lesson from the demon, I'll pass, thanks." He retreated back into that smart-ass mode that had protected him to this point from the thoughts of things he didn't like.

"It's not philosophy. It's not a metaphor." She stared into his eyes, watching the words sink into him, watching him take it in. "There's a real fire in the pit, agonies you can't even imagine."

He was listening, when she was talking. The cocky attitude was still there. "No, I saw Hellraiser, I get the gist."

She turned away again, walking a few more steps. "Actually they got that pretty close, except for all the custom leather."

Behind her, he stood still and she walked a little further, then stopped, turning back to him. His face was no longer shuttered, everything hidden. She saw fear and as if he felt that, he looked up at her, the wariness immediately returning.

"The answer is yes by the way."

"I'm sorry?"

"Yes, the same thing will happen to you." She watched that cocky expression vanish, his eyes narrow. "It might take centuries, but sooner or later Hell will burn away your humanity. Every hellbound soul, every one, turns into something else." He was listening now, and thinking. "Turns you into us, so yeah – yeah, you can count on it."

Dean looked away, his mouth lifting at one corner, as he finally asked the question that he needed the answer to, and already knew. "There's no way of saving me from the pit, is there?"

Ruby looked at him. He still had hope, she saw. Not much hope but there was still a flicker left in him. He appreciated honesty, and he already feared the worst. It was a risk but a calculated one.

"No."

He nodded, and she watched the tiny hope disappear from him, his eyes cutting away as he walked toward her again. "Then why'd you tell Sam you could?"

"So he would talk to me. You Winchesters can be pretty bigoted. I needed something to help him get past the –"

"The demon thing?" His brows drew together, pushing the disappointment down, pushing it aside. She watched him do it. "It's pretty hard to get past."

She smiled, at the change in his voice, in his expression, the suspicion back. "Look at you." Big brother, she thought, protective, tough, trying to get intel for his brother. And underneath that, a spreading fear. "Trying to be all stoic. My god, it's heartbreaking."

Dean's gaze cut away, she could see the irritation at her words, the not-so-subtle patronisation bringing him back to the conversation, back to where she needed him to be.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I need your help," Ruby said quietly.

"Help with what?" he snapped at her. It was amazing, she thought, he could sense the trap, no matter how well hidden it was. The only way to blunt those instincts was to confuse them.

"With Sam."

He exhaled sharply, turning away and back to her, his expression cold and hard as his suspicions were confirmed.

She gave him a minute to think he had it all figured out, then she continued, "The way you stuck that demon tonight, it was pretty tough. Sam's almost there, but not quite, you need to help me get him ready." She paused, watching his eyes. "For life without you; to fight this war on his own."

And there it was. That realisation of what she was talking about. No big brother around to protect Sam. No one to watch his back. No one to turn to if the fight got too big for him. Alone.

Sometime, she thought, he would also think about the other side of that equation. Where he'd be. What that might be like. How it would feel. But for the moment, it was enough that he realised what life would be like for Sam. Without him.

She turned away, walking steadily away from him, leaving him to think it through.

"Ruby."

She stopped, her back to him and waited. He'd come to the right conclusion more quickly than she'd thought he would.

"Why do you want us to win?"

She turned back to him slowly. The next part was the hardest, harder than dropping the baited hook, harder than letting him play with it. He needed to have a reason to believe her. And it needed to be an emotional reason, one that he could feel, without having to think about it. He was a fascinating man, really. Contradictions piled on contradictions. He could be hard. But the man he didn't know, the one he'd repressed, was strong, rather than hard. And sensitive. And possessed of an extraordinary imagination. It would all work against him, when he went downstairs, she knew. It would tear him apart and they would drink his pain.

"Isn't it obvious?" She looked away, brows drawing together as if the realisations were new and immediate. "I'm not like them, I- I don't know why, I wish I was, but I'm not." She drew in a deep breath and looked back at him. "I remember what it's like."

"What what's like?"

"Being human."

She watched his face change, the compassion that was always there, even when he did his best to hide it, surfacing.

The difference for Dean between a monster and a human, it was a wide gap. Most monsters had started out human, but it was still a card that could work with him.

_As you are now, so once was I, as I am now so shall you be_. She'd been human. He would become a demon. She thought it was enough.


	10. Chapter 10 Pontiac, 2008

_**Pontiac, Illinois, September 2008**_

* * *

Castiel stood on the grass verge, staring at the red-roofed barn on the other side of the two-lane asphalt road. A summoning. For him.

He sighed softly. Obedience to Heaven, to his Father, in all things, in all times. This was his assignment and he would see it through, as he had all the others, even when he'd been sure he would not survive them. Faith was a strange abstract. It gave as it took. And he was still alive.

He approached the doors, feeling the men inside, their fear and their doubts. He was, as yet, imperfectly enclosed by his vessel, and the energies that should have been dormant and quiescent inside the flesh and bone and nerves still escaped. Above him the loose sheets of the tin roof began to bang and lift, slamming against the rafters as that energy shot out in different directions. He felt for the bar that held the doors shut and watched it slide free, the doors transparent to his gaze.

In earlier, simpler times, he could have manifested as a light, or a fire. Mankind's ability to process the fantastical appeared to have shrunk as the millennia passed, however. And as he became aware of the seething emotions filling the men at the end of the building, he acknowledged that the human vessel was a less threatening visage in which to introduce himself.

* * *

The nimbus of energy surrounding him overloaded each of the overhead lights as he passed under them, walking steadily forward. He could see them now, with his vessel's eyes, two men clutching at their puny weapons. He could hear their hearts accelerating in their chest cavities, their breathing rasping in and out of their lungs. He was aware of the shots that they fired at him, the small pieces of metal tearing up the fabric of his vessel's garments but disintegrating before they penetrated the inner layers.

When they looked at each other, and dropped their guns, he thought they might have given up. It was a forlorn hope really. After two thousands of watching humankind, he should have realised that they weren't ready to give up just yet. Mankind had ever been tenacious. And optimistic.

"Who are you?" Dean Winchester circled around, and Castiel turned with him, his back to the other man.

"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition." He looked at the man in front of him, seeing fear in his eyes. Why was he so afraid? He stood there, alive and in his body because of what had been done for him.

"Yeah. Thanks for that."

He pulled his arm back and the knife hissed through the air, ending its downward plunge in the angel's chest. Man and angel looked down at the knife hilt, incongruous against the waterproofed material of the coat, for a long moment.

Castiel raised his head and looked at Dean, his hand curling around the bone hilt and pulling the knife free, letting it go. He could, perhaps, understand the impulse. Fear was a powerful driver and he hadn't been able to establish contact with his charge until now.

Dean stared at him as the metal clanged on the concrete floor. He exchanged a brief glance with the other man, standing behind the angel. The older man swung the crowbar. Without turning to look, Castiel caught the end, turning and inexorably drawing the older man to him. He touched his forehead with his fingertips and the old man crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

"We need to talk, Dean," Castiel said quietly, glancing down at the still form on the floor briefly. "Alone."

He watched Dean as he walked warily around him, going to the other man. Turning away when he realised that the human was merely checking the state and health of the older man, he looked at the nearby table, noting the bowls and herbs they'd used to summon him. Cantrips and granny magic, he thought. Efficacious, but so primitive.

Crouching beside Bobby, his fingers resting on his neck, Dean turned his head and watched the angel, standing by the table, flicking through Bobby's journal incuriously, the air of someone waiting in a doctor's office and idly looking through a magazine so strong he had to forcibly shut it out.

"Your friend's alive." The tone left no doubt that it was only by the angel's mercy that was the case.

"Who are you?" Dean asked.

"Castiel."

"Yeah, I figured that much," he said, a little sourly. "I mean – what are you?"

Castiel turned to look at him. "I am an angel of the Lord."

Dean was silent for a long moment, getting slowly to his feet as he looked at the angel. "Get the hell out of here. There's no such thing."

It might have been slightly funny, in other circumstances, the angel thought. Brought up as a hunter of the supernatural, tortured by demons, raised from Hell … and the man didn't believe in the powers of Heaven, only those of evil.

"This is your problem, Dean." Castiel stared into his eyes. "You have no faith."

Lightning coruscated through the open door, accompanied by a peal of thunder. The eyes of the human widened as the light filled the building and he saw the shadows behind the angel, the shadows of wings extending up and outwards, wings that spanned the width of the barn and lapped around the walls. The lightning died and the shadows disappeared.

Castiel watched Dean's bravado disappear for a moment, watched him accept, for the moment, the proof of his own eyes. He was surprised and disappointed to see that acceptance buried a moment later.

"Some angel you are." Dean's mouth twisted. "You burned out that poor woman's eyes."

Castiel bowed his head. The woman had persisted. It was unfortunate. "I warned her not to spy on my true form. It can be ... overwhelming to humans, and so can my real voice. But you already knew that."

"You mean the gas station and the motel." Dean remembered the intensity of the sound – not even a sound, really – that had drilled into his brain. "That was you talking?"

The angel nodded slightly. It had been disappointing to realise that the soul he'd saved, had drawn from the fires of Hell, had only been traumatised and injured by his attempts to speak to him.

"Buddy, next time, lower the volume," Dean advised.

Castiel dropped his gaze, acknowledging the error. "That was my mistake." He looked back to Dean. "Certain people, special people, can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong."

He thought it would reassure the man in front of him, calm him. Unfortunately it seemed to have the opposite effect. Castiel watched him drag back the shreds of his earlier confidence, his earlier anger. After Hell, this man's armour against what he didn't want to know was thinner. He couldn't hide himself so well. And that made him more afraid.

"And what visage are you in now, huh?" The words were almost spat out. "What, holy tax accountant?"

The angel sighed inwardly, looking down at the body he wore, his fingers rising to the lapels of the trenchcoat. Jimmy Novak's body, his soul nestled safely in the lattices of Castiel's mind. "This? This is... a vessel."

"You're possessing some poor bastard?" Dean stared at him incredulously.

Castiel made an effort to soften his expression. He could feel the man's unease, the choice of words showing all too clearly how close his thoughts of Hell were.

"He's a devout man," he told the human. "He actually prayed for this."

"Yeah? Well, I'm not buying what you're selling, so who are you really?"

Watching him, seeing the jaw muscles clench and twitch, the tension in his body increasing as the conversation continued, Castiel realised that his initial assessment of Dean's fear had been an underestimate. He didn't believe the man was afraid of him. Not physically, at least, but his fear of the unknown quantity that he represented was obvious. He couldn't imagine what the human thought he might be.

He looked at him, brows drawing together slightly. "I told you."

"Right." There was a world of sarcasm in the short word. "And why would an _angel_ rescue me from Hell?"

The angel saw that he was almost shaking now, confused, not knowing what to believe, not knowing what to think. Castiel walked to him slowly, attempting to project an ambient harmlessness as he wondered how he could get through to this man, who believed in demons, but not in their opposites.

"Good things do happen, Dean," he spoke gently, looking into his face.

The man was silent, and Castiel's attention sharpened on him, attempting to see the thoughts flowing through his mind. He watched as Dean's face tightened, hardening at some memory.

"Not in my experience."

"What's the matter?" For the first time, Castiel looked carefully at him. Under the taut repression of his feelings, edged about with a defensive anger, the angel could see doubt. Uncertainty. And fear.

There was so much pain in this man, he realised, recognising the dark shadows that lay behind the green eyes. So much shame. So much … self-hatred. He knew everything this soul had done, down in the pit. Winchester had been in agony when he'd raised him.

"You don't think you deserve to be saved."

Memory crowding the darkened eyes. A heart accelerating wildly in the chest. He watched Dean struggle for control over his feelings, over his thoughts. Was it just that he'd been in Hell, and the experience was still fresh in his mind, Castiel wondered? Or did it go deeper, to a lifetime of doubt? No soul could completely resist the effects of the Accursed plane.

"Why'd you do it?" The words came out fast, as if the man was barely holding himself back from screaming.

Castiel remembered the summoning, remembered the archangel standing beside him, and the gathering of the Host, and the dark and confusion and the stench of Hell.

"Because God commanded it." The angel's dark blue eyes bored into the man's, and again the muscles in Dean's face twitched and jumped, his fear palpable beyond the paper thin control he had over himself.

"Because we have work for you."

He watched fear turn to disbelief, and understood. A little more anyway. Torture and pain. The human imagination. This man's imagination. He wondered if Dean would ever be able to trust in anything again. If, to him, things would always get worse, never better. The man – the soul – standing before him had been waiting to hear that this was a reprieve, not an end to the torture. That he had some task he was needed for on earth, some Hell-related job, his imagination working with what he knew to produce scenarios of ever-lasting damnation.

Plainly, Castiel considered, he had never imagined that another power might require him. Watching Dean's face, seeing disbelief chased by doubt, the expressions flitting across lightning fast, the angel saw that inside, much deeper, there was denial. A powerful denial.

_Outcast. Unclean. Unworthy._

He knew what had been done to this man. And he knew what he had done to others. He was not one of those of his kind who believed that this soul was irredeemable. His Father had commanded this soul to be raised. That meant only one thing. The soul of Dean Winchester had remained pure.

Acceptance of what has been done. Contrition. Penance for the wrongs to restore the balance. These things were essential for forgiveness and redemption. From the moment he'd touched the soul, he'd seen that Winchester had moved through that process, driven, perhaps, by his conscience, by the inborn knowledge of right. He was, still, a righteous man.

But Dean had no faith, no belief in anything other than the strong moral code he'd been born with and the love for his family that had withstood everything he'd been through. Neither of those things were enough, Castiel saw. Not enough to convince that he had been forgiven. Had been … cleansed. What he'd done, in his eyes, had forever marked him. Had blackened his soul. Had damned him beyond the possibility of redemption.

It wasn't true. But he could see that it would take a lot more than words to convince this man of that.


	11. Chapter 11 Riverton, 2009

_**Riverton, Wyoming, March 2009**_

* * *

Alastair spat out the blood and water that filled his mouth, stretching back against the timber frame. His mind slid through the vessel's body, assessing the damage. It was minor, really. Not that Dean wasn't trying, the boy was doing his best and, he admitted, had come up with a couple of truly interesting twists on the standard practices. But …

"You're just not getting deep enough." He looked down at Dean's face, hiding the satisfaction that bloomed as he saw the uncertainty in it. "Well, you lack the resources. Reality is just, I don't know, too concrete up here."

_And you don't know how to see the weaknesses here, Dean,_ he thought. The weaknesses that were all too apparent to him, looking at Dean in his body, that expressive face giving away all of the young man's secrets. And it was delicious, as piquant and tangy as a freshly slaughtered innocent, to torture the torturer and to see the cuts go deeper and further with every word.

"Honestly, Dean … you have no idea how bad it really was … and what you really did for us." He watched Dean pour salt into the long soft funnel of the piping bag, choosing his words carefully, aiming for those soft spots he could still see so clearly. Dean was afraid to be here, afraid to cut too deeply, lest he remember how much he enjoyed it, how addictive drawing the pain out was, how it had seduced him to greater darknesses. He was trying to hold onto himself, to keep that addiction down and inside. _Oh, my little grasshopper_, the demon thought with glee, _you won't get near me unless you open up that throttle, redline and go for it_. Of course, Alastair considered, the distance it would take … well, Dean would be a monster before he'd finished.

"Shut up."

He felt the change. Heard the thread of fear in the whispered words. The first real crack in Dean's armour. The nature of pain, he remembered telling Dean, down amidst the flame and blood, is fluid. For some it is a physical thing. But for others – and they were almost always the most interesting – it came from themselves, from their emotions, their lives, their endless wells of guilt and shame.

"The whole, bloody thing, Dean. The reason Lilith wanted you there in the first place –"

"Well, then I'll just make you shut up." Dean crossed the distance between them, and gripped Alastair's jaw, his fingers driving into the muscles and forcing the demon's mouth open.

"Lilith really –"

The salt poured down into his mouth, filling his throat, cascading into his organs. The piping bag was a nice touch, he thought, as he struggled against his vessel's asphyxiation, and shunted the crawling pain of the salt infusing its membranes far from his consciousness. Dean's imagination had always been up to the challenge of finding new ways to inflict agony. And the bonus had been that the more he'd immersed himself in the pain of others, the more pain he'd felt himself. Win-win, Alastair remembered with an inward smile.

As Dean pulled the bag away, he coughed up the salt and liquid and torn and bloody membranes of his throat, feeling it drip off his chin.

"Something caught in my throat." Another tearing hack brought up a second moistened mass of salt and flesh from deeper down. "I think it's my throat."

Dean leaned close to him, and Alastair could see that he knew that hadn't gone any deeper with the salt than anything else he'd tried. He repressed a smile at the frustration in his former pupil's eyes.

Dean simply couldn't see the fissures. He couldn't see the cracks up here. He couldn't get past the flesh and bone and blood. And here, on this plane of strict physical laws, all he could see was the vessel.

Inhaling deeply, the demon breathed in the fear and doubt emanating from the man. He would never get deep enough, he thought. Never see the fault lines that ran through everyone, from the most mighty angel to the lowliest demon, the pressure points about to give way that riddled mankind from the moment of the first sin. Dean understood shame. And guilt. He understood how those things had worked against himself. But he could not see them in others. No one could hate the man standing in front of him more than he hated himself. And the toughest barrier for Dean Winchester was his own humanity.

"Well, strap in, 'cause I'm just starting to have fun." The hunter turned away, walking back to the cart, and Alastair saw the lines of uncertainty in the set of his shoulders, in the carelessness of his actions as he slapped the bag down.

"You know, it was supposed to be your father," Alastair said, his tone brightly conversational, watching him pour more holy water into the cup, feeling that dark thrill coursing through him as he structured the next few minutes in his mind.

How it would feel to push this knife deep into Dean. How the man would feel when realisation hit … and everything he'd feared about himself turned out to be … true?

"He was supposed to bring it on. But, in the end, it was you."

The demon watched him dip the Kurdish knife into the cup, pouring salt over the wet metal. Dean didn't look up. "Bring what on?"

"Oh, every night, the same offer, remember?" Alastair tilted his head up, eyes half-closing as he drew out his pleasure in this moment. He let his gaze drop to the man, watching his shoulders tighten fractionally. "Same as your father."

Dean was fiddling with the knife again, and not even noticing that his so-called victim was standing upright, unbowed and unbroken, and not to put too fine a point on it, almost gleeful.

"And finally you said, _'Sign me up.'_ Oh, the first time you picked up my razor ..."

Alastair watched the memories return to Dean, knowing them as intimately as the man, remembering with his student. Pain was pain, whether it was your own or someone else's; it was like blood. You could drink your own or you could catch it in cups from the dripping pipes of another, but it all felt the same as it went down the hatch. He watched Dean's movements slow, his body still.

"The first time you sliced into that weeping bitch ..."

Watched as Dean turned to him finally, and he could look into his eyes, savouring this moment, tasting it, submerging himself in it. "That was the first seal."

It was perfect. He saw the ever-so-slight widening of Dean's eyes as the words sunk in, sunk deep. He saw Dean's control tighten, over his expression, over his thoughts, but too late. As always, too late. The acid was inside him now, eating its way down, through all the things that Dean still held to, through all the things that were keeping him sane.

Dean walked up to Alastair, his mouth twisting into a slight curve. "You're lying."

The demon stared into Dean's eyes. "And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break."

He allowed himself the smallest of smiles as he watched the face of the hunter, and drank the pain that seeped out past Dean's control. He saw that pain building as Dean turned abruptly away, walking back to the cart and stopping.

_Oh but there's more, Dean, there's so much more_, he thought. _So much more to rend apart your defences, to shatter your pathetic armour, to reach down inside, right down and rip out your heart._

"We had to break the first seal before any others. Only way to get the dominoes to fall, right? Topple the one at the front of the line."

Pain visible in the tension in that body. In the gradual tightening of the muscles of the shoulders and back and chest. In the heartbeat, increasing as shock started to shut off the nerve connections between muscle and brain. In the fine trembling he could perceive, rattling through Dean's frame as he struggled to contain what he was hearing, what he was feeling. _Pain_. And more pain.

"When we win," Alastair continued, his voice softening. "When we bring on the apocalypse and burn this earth down, we'll owe it all to you, Dean Winchester."

_And that, son, is how you torture someone_, Alastair thought, the frisson of pleasure trembling through his vessel, wiping out the physical pain, overriding everything. He couldn't see Dean's face anymore, but he didn't need to. He could feel the agony rolling through the man, and he knew Dean. Knew him inside and out. Knew that he could no more take the weight of what had just been dropped on him than he could fly.

He'd always had that sneaking suspicion that in his time in Hell, Dean had had a way to hold onto more than he was letting on. Keeping some part of himself secret and safe, away from what he forced himself to do every day. He couldn't criticise the relish the man had shown in his duties, but he'd sensed that it wasn't all of the man, wielding the razor and inflicting the torment.

He could see it more clearly up here, that part that hadn't gone untouched, by any means, but had remained somehow intact. He hadn't really carved Dean into a new animal, he realised. It didn't matter, not now, not to him. It might have mattered to Dean, but he wasn't going to tell him. Dean would torture himself for the rest of his life with the thought of what he'd done down in the fire and brimstone, the horror of what he thought he'd become. And that, in the end, was more than satisfactory.

"Believe me, son, I wouldn't lie about this. It's kind of a –" Alastair looked to his left, hearing a faint noise. From the pipe above, another drip grew full and fell. It hit the clean spot in the rim of the chalked circle, the broken edge of the trap. "– religious sort of thing with me."

"No. I don't think you are lying. But even if the demons do win," Dean looked down at the wickedly serrated blade in his hand, the knuckles standing out white as he tightened his hold. "You won't be there to see it."

He turned around. Alastair watched his eyes widen.

"You should talk to your plumber about the pipes."


	12. Chapter 12 River Pass, 2009

_**River Pass, Colorado, September 2009**_

* * *

Ellen ran up the stairs, cursing the fact that she'd left the pump action down there, that she had a knife and her .38 Special and that was it. She could hear the pounding of Dean's feet behind her, and she pushed herself harder, faster, not wanting him shot in the back because she'd been too goddamned slow.

They shot out of the church, onto the bright sunlit street, and Ellen veered right, cutting across the lawn of a house three up, and over the yard fence, crossing two more yards before she found the place she remembered, the little weatherboard house with the rental notice on its gate.

Jogging around to the back door, she slowed and watched as Dean slid his jacket down over one arm, wrapping it around his forearm and hand before he smashed the small square pane above the door knob.

He took point and they worked the house, checking all the rooms, even the basement, before returning to the kitchen.

"Well, we know who War is." Dean shook the glass fragments in his jacket out, pulling it back on and sitting at the small table.

"Yeah but we can't take him by ourselves, not just you and me." Ellen looked through the cupboards, finding a couple of thick jelly glasses and taking them to the sink. She filled them with water and handed one to Dean. "And we have to tell Jo and Rufus, get Sam back."

"Not arguing." Dean drank the water down in a couple of swallows, wiping his mouth as he looked around. "Sound to you like War was getting bored with the status quo, wanted to get things moving again?"

"Sure did." She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. "The Horsemen, Dean. The Four Horsemen."

"Yeah. The party never stops." He got up to refill his glass, and Ellen opened her eyes, turning her head to watch him. Leaning against the edge of the sink, she saw his head bow, his shoulders hunch up a little.

"What happened to you, Dean?"

"Nothing." He turned off the tap, and turned around slowly, his gaze cutting away. "I'm fine."

At any other time, she might have taken the warning underlying the response seriously, might have backed off and left him to figure it out on his own. But not this time.

It had been almost two years since she'd seen him last, and she couldn't believe how much he'd changed, how much they'd both changed, him and Sam. He wouldn't have waited to get someone else's advice, wouldn't have needed anyone else's advice or wanted it back then. Something had gone out of him and she couldn't work out what it was. But he needed to get it figured out, because right now good leaders were thin on the ground, and she had to know if she could trust him.

"You figured out what was going on real fast, once you had the kick in the ass to get you going. Since when have you doubted your own ability to work out a course of action, Dean?"

He looked away, mouth twisting slightly and she saw the defensiveness rise in him, then fall away, as if he couldn't be bothered pretending any longer. "A lot happened, since we saw you the last time, Ellen."

"Yeah, I get that." Ellen saw the nervousness in him, the first time she'd seen that, aside from the ride back from Chicago. But that had been different.

"Bobby told me a little," she continued cautiously. Singer had tried to be circumspect about what he'd said, but all the pieces were interconnected and she had contacts with people who'd needed to know about the devil as well. She'd told them some things, not how it'd started. Most of the hunters she knew would find out anyway, she thought. Demons talked.

He looked down, licking his lips. "Well, he shouldn't have."

"You made it back, Dean."

His mouth lifted at one corner, humourlessly as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. "No one makes it back, Ellen."

Whatever had happened to him, it had taken his confidence and it had taken his recklessness, but it hadn't taken the core of him, she thought. Watching him earlier, in the church, seeing his need to find Sam, to get him out, overruled by the responsibility he'd taken on for the people in that room, the people who were depending on him to get them out of the town safely, that had been clear.

The silence between them grew longer and louder and she thought he wasn't going to talk at all, then he lifted his head and looked at her.

"I-I've made a lot of crap decisions lately, Ellen." He picked up the full glass and drank a little, carrying it back to the table and dropping into a chair. "I don't … I'm not …"

He looked down at the top of the table, a scratched and cheap laminate top in a faded pattern that might have been supposed to resemble marble. She saw the muscle at the point of his jaw flex, some memory shadowing his eyes.

In the afternoon light, shining through the small and dirty window, the kitchen seemed warm and peaceful. A trick of the mind, Ellen thought, considering what was going on outside.

And, she added mentally, there was nothing peaceful in the man who sat across the table from her. He looked like someone with the weight of the world on his shoulders, a weight that had teeth, not just bowing him down, but eating him from the inside. It wasn't really tiredness that had left the bruised-looking smudges around his eyes, although he looked tired. It went deeper, she thought, a loss of something that had been a cornerstone to him.

"What happened between you and Sam?" she asked softly. He glanced at her and away, that slight lift of the corner of his mouth there again before vanishing.

"Sam made a choice." His face spasmed slightly, something there then gone. He drew in a breath, looking away as he shrugged. "It – we both had to live with it."

Watching the way he was struggling to keep it all inside, she realised that whatever that choice had been, that was what had done it – or at least, it was a big part of it.

He lifted his head, meeting her eyes briefly then looking away again, his fingers rubbing over his forehead slowly.

"I-I don't think … I don't know how to trust him now," he said, and made a small noise, somewhere between a snort and a cough, not really either. "I don't know how to trust anyone anymore."

Ellen held her breath. It was the most he'd ever shown her. She wondered if it was the most he'd ever let out to anyone. She saw his eyes lose focus, his attention turning inward, withdrawing into the memories that seemed to be scourging him.

There was a part of her that wanted to smack him upside the head, bring him back, tell him to leave the past in the past and get on with what was going on right now, but she kept that part tightly in check. It wouldn't help, wouldn't do anything but encourage him to bury whatever had happened to him even further. Not looking at things, pretending that they hadn't happened, wasn't a good long term strategy for people in their life. Sooner or later those things would rise up and he'd be forced to deal with them, and they would be distorted by that time, distorted and festering and poisonous.

Turning to look back at the smeary window, she let out a soft sigh. She and Jo had stayed with Bobby for a few months after Wyoming, before they'd found their own place again. Near the end of that time, Bobby had shown her Jim Murphy's journal, and in it had been a revelation that had almost destroyed her, but had, in the end, saved her. She still felt regret for all the years that she'd shut out John Winchester, believing what he'd told her, believing that her life had been shattered by him. It wasn't until the poison of that belief had finally been drained that she'd realised how much it had shaped her over the years.

She didn't want to see his son shaped by the poisons of what had happened to him, all the things he might be believing about himself, not if she could stop it. She owed that to John.

"You're a good hunter, Dean," she said slowly. "I've watched you, seen you think through things before you barrel in."

He looked at her, his eyes refocussing, his face losing that inward expression. "But?"

"But you're second-guessing yourself." She leaned her chin on her elbow. "It's not just Sam you don't trust. You don't trust yourself."

As he turned away, she saw his throat working. "No."

He was a good man. That was something she'd always known about him. Not a safe man. Not a man that would be safe for her daughter. But a good man. He was John's son. In that moment, however, she saw that he'd never believe that. Something had stripped that out of him, not who he was, she realised, but how he saw himself.

"You got a bad deal? We all got bad deals, hon." She leaned back in her chair, wondering if he would listen to her. Pain hardened, she'd read somewhere. And great pain hardened greatly. It was a lesson she'd learned young. "We've all made stupid mistakes and lost people and done things we wished we hadn't."

She saw a flash of anger in his eyes, his gaze snapping back to her, and thought he was going to throw it out at her, what had happened, why it was worse for him, but at the last second, he closed his mouth, glowering at her instead.

She smiled humourlessly at the reaction. "What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter what it was, Dean. The only thing that matters is that you understand what it did. What it did to you."

He looked around the room restlessly. Again she had the impression that he wanted to say something, but that he couldn't. He looked back at her.

"What's the worst thing you've done, Ellen?" he asked her, the words edged with a very faint contempt, as if he couldn't imagine anything too bad. She met his gaze with all the steadiness she could muster. It was still a wound, older now, thick with scar tissue. Still sensitive.

"Worst thing I did was believe your dad's story about what happened to my Bill," she told him bluntly, forcing it out. There had been too many lies, too many misconceptions. "Believed it and trashed our friendship, and poisoned myself with it for fourteen years."

He stared at her.

"I knew Bill'd had a fling. A few years before. That man couldn't keep a secret like that, everything showed on his face." She looked down into her glass, hands curling around it, her lips twisting slightly. The memory was bitter-sweet. "Didn't know there was a child from it, but I could have lived with that, better than living without him."

She raised her head. "Bill made John promise not to tell me what really happened. And your dad kept his promise, put the blame on himself, knowing he would probably lose us as well as Bill from it."

When John had brought back Bill's body, she'd been broken, she remembered. In many ways, the ways that'd counted, he'd been the centre of her life. Big and easy-going, his strengths had countered her weaknesses, and hers had been the counter to his. And they'd made something, something between them, that was irreplaceable. John had kept his promise and her first reaction had been rage. Even now, her memories of that intense fury at him were still vivid. She had, she knew, been looking for someone to blame and he'd stepped in, offering himself.

"Bobby had Pastor Jim's journals," she said, with a small shrug. "Your daddy told Jim what happened and Jim'd written it all down. When I read it …"

When she'd read it, her world had collapsed and black had been white and up had been down and everything she'd told herself, everything she'd thought, had exploded in her face.

"It took me a long time to figure out how much I changed from believing that." She looked out the window, a faint shiver rilling down her spine. "Partly because I was too busy worrying about Jo to take the time to work it out, partly because I was too afraid to see how much damage had been done, too afraid to face up to it."

For a long time, all she'd been able to think of was the wasted years. When she'd finally managed to get past her shame at that waste, she'd realised just how much of herself she'd lost that day. Not only from Bill's loss, but from the way she'd hardened, the way she'd tried to stop herself caring.

Her attention sharpened as she noticed the sun's position through the grubby glass. "We should head out soon."

He nodded slowly. "You couldn't have known, Ellen, not if Dad lied about it."

"No," she agreed readily, looking back at him. "But when I did find out, it would have been a helluva lot better if I'd made the time to get it sorted, instead of pretending it would somehow sort itself."

His gaze dropped to the tabletop, and she watched him thinking that over.

Whatever had happened, to him when Sam had been killed, and between him and Sam, if he could get it clear now, not just bury it with the rest, he stood a chance of regaining himself. She thought he might, if they made it through this, and no new threat appeared too quickly. Not the odds of that were good. The countdown to the end had already begun.

Getting to her feet, Ellen leaned on the edge of the table. "We need you, Dean. What's coming … what's here now … there's no room for doubts, or might've-beens."

He ducked his head, away from her gaze.

She'd asked Bobby about the boys, after she'd read the journal.

"_John was driven_," he'd told her, a little unwillingly. "_And he was desperate. But he put a load on that boy, Ellen. A load too heavy and too early and Dean's never gotten out from under it_."

"_The load's the load, Bobby_," she'd said. "_He's carrying it_."

"_Yeah_," Bobby'd growled back at her. "_An' it's killing him_."

Looking at the tension in him now, she wondered if the old man'd been right.


	13. Chapter 13 Lawrence, 2010

_**Lawrence, Kansas, May 2010**_

* * *

The rumble of the engine caught his attention, and Michael's, the two of them turning in unison to see the black car come up over the hill, music blaring from the open window, the leather-clad arm protruding insouciantly from the door.

_Dean._

Goddamned single-track, co-dependent, whining, endlessly resurrected, moronic brother of his vessel. He'd seen terriers who were less obsessed. He'd seen obsessive-compulsives who were less obsessed than this man.

He'd tried to keep Sam happy. Tried to ignore the insults and the smart-ass comments and the outright rudeness, his patience wearing thinner and thinner as time went by. He felt the sharp thrust of hope from the soul bound within the vessel, as the man got out of the car, leaning on the roof and door, and looked from him to Michael and back again.

"Howdy, boys." Dean's eyes narrowed against the flat glare. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?"

He shut the car door and walked toward them. "Hey, we need to talk."

Lucifer looked at Michael, seeing his brother's anger in the tight expression on his vessel's face. The sight somehow ignited his own rage, barely held in all this time.

"Dean." Lucifer looked out of Sam's eyes at his vessel's brother. Sam's brother. Sam's soon-to-be-dead brother. "Even for you, this is a whole new mountain of stupid."

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Sam."

The archangel felt himself glowing at the insolence. The monkey had upped the ante and sorry, Sammy, but your brother is going to pay for everything, over three thousand years of pent-up rage had to get a release somehow. He could feel Sam beating weakly against his control and he smiled. Sam had believed he was strong enough to take him, to hold him in a fight for possession. But the nature of consent, given freely and without doubt, had meant that he'd never stood a chance.

* * *

"Hey! Assbutt!"

He watched in disbelief as Michael exploded into flame and disappeared, turning slowly to face the angel who'd thrown the bottle.

"Castiel. Did you just molotov my brother with holy fire?" It was getting harder and harder to maintain a calm façade. No low-ranked seraphim would have even dreamt of attacking an arch in the old days. It was, perhaps, time to remind them of that.

"Uh ..." The angel backed away, hands rising appeasingly. "No."

"No one dicks with Michael but me," Lucifer said softly, snapping his fingers. Blood, flesh, bone, pulverised and shredded, burst outward in a cloud of red, coating the other human who'd come with the seraphim.

"Sammy, can you hear me?" Dean took two steps toward him, and he turned back, eyes narrowing at the aggravating insolence of this man. Inside the vessel, locked deep down, Sam was frantic, hammering the walls that held him, desperate, silently screaming.

"You know ... I tried to be nice ... for Sammy's sake. But you –" Lucifer's hands reached out, closing and tightening on the lapels of the leather jacket, "– were such a pain ... in my ass." He lifted Dean and threw him over the hood of the black car, into the windshield.

The gunshot was loud in the quiet field, hitting him high in the back of the shoulder with the first shot. Lucifer turned slowly, looking at the human behind him, as the second shot ploughed into his chest. He looked down at the wound, the round black hole through the jacket running with Sam's blood. He lifted his hand and snapped his wrist in a semi-circle and the human's head spun, the sound of the break in the spine almost as distinct as the shots had been.

"No!" Dean's anguished shout from the hood brought his attention back to what he'd been doing. He strode to the car, gripping the man's ankles and yanking him down the smooth, black metal.

"Yes."

The first blow felt liberating, drawing first blood, the sting in his hand sending a frisson of anticipation through him. He waited for Dean to straighten up, to turn back to him, waited for him to beg and plead for his life.

"Sammy? Are you in there?" Dean's voice was low and gentle, but insistent.

One – _small_ – part of him had to admire Dean's bravado. He could see the fear, held down by force of will, just below the surface of all that determination, but he just kept on, ignoring the warnings and the threats, ignoring common sense and apparently, all of his survival instincts, getting into his face and not even noticing that he was going to be in a world of hurt very soon, that he was going to be drowning in his own bodily fluids.

"Oh, he's in here, all right." Lucifer slammed his fist into the side of Dean's face, feeling the skin over Sam's knuckles split as bone hit bone.

"And he's going to feel the snap of your bones." He pulled Dean upright again, his fist smashing into the cheekbone and eye socket, sending Sam's incredibly annoying brother spinning to the ground beside the car.

"Every single one." He reached down and dragged the man back to his feet, pushing him against the side of the car. "We're going to take our time."

So good to just to let this anger out, to have a punching bag so worthy of his effort. Sam was allowed to see it all, just to make sure that he knew where the line was drawn. Dean was no longer a threat, not in any sense of the word, but this, this was satisfying … justice for all the time wasted, for the Horsemen lost, for his plans thwarted … he would take it all out in trade.

The only sounds in the dead, bare field were the sounds of bone against flesh, bone against bone, the grunts of pain and impact from his victim, the wet squelch of skin splitting and the soft patter of the drops of blood as they sprayed over the shiny black paint and glass.

He stopped, for a moment, gripping the collar of the jacket to lift the man higher against the glass, bring him into prime target range.

"Sam, s'okay. S'okay. I'm here. I'm here. I'm not going to leave you." Dean opened the eye that wasn't swollen shut, staring into his eyes through bloody lashes, pushing the words out through cut and bleeding lips.

_Unbelievable_. Lucifer looked down at him. Barely conscious and he was still trying to get through to his brother. What was that? A lack of intelligence? Disinterest in his own survival? He'd sensed, more than once in their encounters, that Dean was ready to die, would sacrifice himself willingly if that was what was needed. It didn't seem like that now, exactly. Something was driving him, something powerful enough to keep him focussed through the pain and disorientation and confusion that must be filling him, his brain slopping around in his skull after all those blows.

Love? The thought intruded tentatively, prompted as much by the frenzied shrieking of the soul he held prisoner, as by the sight of the man in front of him, dying from his injuries, but not acknowledging it, not yet.

_Michael's voice, resounding through the chambers of Heaven. "Bow down before the likeness and the image of the divinity." And in that face was love, the love of his Father, the love that shone through the flesh and bone and blood, the love that made up the soul, the soul that no angel possessed. This was love? This inability to stop trying? The half-blind persistence of this weak, dying creature in front of him?_

Lucifer's fist curled tight and smashed into Dean's temple, then into the jaw again.

"M'not goin' to leave you."

And still Sam's brother kept talking. Lucifer drew back his arm, his fist tightening again. Last time pays for all, he thought, fury filling his veins, crackling along Sam's nerves. _Say bye-bye, Sammy, your brother might go to Heaven, might be forgiven and sanctified and given Paradise, but you will never see him again_.

He shifted slightly, to get the right angle to crack the skull open, and the reflection hit him precisely in the eye, a glint off the corner of the windshield trim, a spear driving into his brain. And he was held by it. And through it, his brain – Sam's brain – registered the sight of a small green army soldier, stuffed into the ashtray of the rear door armrest.

Lucifer felt the vessel fill … with memories, with emotions, threaded through by a single unbroken warp. A lifetime of memories, of love, of unity, of loyalty, of courage and that persistence, that determination that kept them getting up, time after time, no matter how badly they'd been beaten. Sam's memories, of his family, of his brother, of everything they had been through, and everything they had survived. Together. And the thread that joined and interlinked every single memory got stronger and brighter, winding its way around the angel, tightening around him, binding him, dragging him down. He fought against it, expending all of his power, reaching for the souls of Hell only to find that what wrapped around him cut him off from those, blanketed him in a burning white light that was shrouding him, suffocating him.

_What makes the human soul, Michael had asked him, when he'd rebelled. What makes them different to us? He'd shaken his head, unable to answer. Michael had looked at him, his expression filled with sorrow. It's love, my brother. Our Father gave them his love, and it fills them. They can love each other, as we cannot. They are strengthened by it, armoured by it, undefeatable with it. Do you not understand?_

_He never had. Had never wanted to._

_NO!_

He screamed at Sam, seeing his prison dissolve, seeing Sam's soul stride free, immersed in the memories that kept coming, getting thicker and stronger as they became more recent … Dean's sacrifice, his resurrection, his fear and pain and doubt and despair, his courage and vehemence and obstinate refusal to lie down and die, even when he wanted to … the flood of memories wrapped around the angel and bound him, cutting off his senses, cutting him out of the vessel's consciousness.

* * *

Inside, in a prison made of love and memories, Lucifer flailed and shrieked, enraged by the walls that were impervious to his power. Gradually, that rage faded away as nothing he did worked. Slowly, rationality returned. Sam would jump into the hole, and return them both to his cage. Once there, his vessel would find out that Hell had a way of stripping the memories from the damned, stripping memory and feeling and leaving only pain and hatred and fury. And once the memories were gone, he would be free again.

He should have realised the danger that Dean Winchester represented. Should have remembered what Michael had told him, he thought, withdrawing into himself. It had looked like a weakness but it wasn't. He would take that into account when he made it out the next time.


	14. Chapter 14 Battle Creek, 2010

_**Battle Creek, Michigan, July 2010**_

* * *

Lisa peered at the glass she held, twisting it this way and that to check that it was actually clean. The new kitchen was small and dark, needing lights on all the time just to see what she was doing. She let out a soft exhale as she rubbed the glass a little harder with the dishcloth.

Why hadn't she noticed that when they'd looked at the place? _Because Dean's only concern had been that he could protect it, that it didn't have the big picture windows and sliding doors that made them vulnerable_. She gave the glass a final wipe and put it away, looking up as Dean walked in.

"Hey."

Bright smile, because it didn't really matter where they lived. So long as he was in her life, in whatever capacity he could be. This last year … she hadn't lied to him, back at the old man's place. It had been the best year of her life, despite the difficulties. From the moment she'd met him, eighteen years old and doing her best to shock the hell out of her parents and prove … something to herself, she couldn't remember what now … he'd had a hold on her that had somehow never really died.

"Hey. Where's Ben?"

"Bike ride." She watched him walk past the counter, his eyes going straight to the windows, looking out to the street, his expression … more than concerned, she thought, more like worried. "What?"

His head bowed and he turned slowly back to the counter, leaning against it, and now there was more than worry on his face. He looked uncertain, and … a little desperate, she thought.

"I don't know what to do here, Lis. I mean, if I knew for sure what the safest thing was, then I'd do it. I'd stay here and look after you guys …," he looked down, shaking his head slightly, his voice getting softer as the next words came out, "or get as far away as I possibly can, but I don't know."

He lifted his head, his eyes meeting hers. She could feel that. God, she could see it. When they'd met, his cocky, bring-it-on decisiveness had been one of the most attractive things about him. He'd never looked uncertain, back then. Now, it seemed more and more, he was being pushed and pulled from multiple directions, and it was spinning him around, confusing him, worrying him.

"And I get what I've been doing lately, you know, what with the yelling," he continued with a grimace, rubbing his forehead tiredly, "and the acting like a prison guard. It's just, that's not me."

No, she knew that was true too. Until he'd hustled her and Ben out of the house and into the car and driven them to another state, telling her nothing but that they were in danger, he'd been patient. Even when he'd first turned up, and those first few weeks, living with his grief and pain, he'd tried hard to not take it out on them.

"You tell yourself you're not going to be something, you know?"

She looked into his eyes as he continued, feeling his pain, feeling that insecurity, but not sure what she could say or do. He was scared that something, from his past, would come after them. She didn't even know what that meant, not really. He hadn't really told her about his past.

_You didn't really ask much, did you?_ She squashed that voice. Some of the things he had told her, some of the things she'd seen for herself, when he'd turned up at Ben's party, well, her curiosity had shrivelled up and she'd found herself not really wanting to know much more.

"But my dad was exactly like this. All the time," he said, his face screwing up as he pushed some thought or memory away, his eyes closing. "It's scaring the hell out of me."

It was another thing she didn't understand. He'd been a great father to Ben, taking time to spend with her son, always relaxed and patient with him, supportive and disciplined without ever being harsh. It was why his behaviour over the last couple of weeks was so strange, so unsettling to both of them. This was the first time he'd even mentioned his father.

_Guess what! He had a whole life before he met you!_ That voice, the one she didn't want to hear, piped up again. _A life that you know nothing about!_

"Dean." Lisa walked around the end of the counter, looking at him as she banished that voice again.

She'd spent the last two days thinking about this, while he'd been gone, relishing the peace and routine in the house, and aware that it was there because he was not. It was breaking her heart. Her dreams, her hopes of what the future might have brought were shattered, because once Sam came back, he wasn't hers anymore, he wasn't the Dean she'd gotten to know over the last year. He belonged to his old life again.

"Can I be honest?" She waited for him to listen, to shake off the past and come back to the present. "Maybe we're safer with you here, maybe gone. I don't know. The one thing that I do know is that you're not a construction worker. You're a hunter. And now you know your brother's out there, things are different."

He turned to her, his expression vulnerable in a way that she'd hardly ever seen in him, and she could see that he already knew what was coming, that he was bracing himself for what he thought she was going to say.

"You don't want to be here, Dean."

"Yes, I do," he countered immediately, the complete certainty in his voice lighting up a small hope that one day he might choose them, choose to stay with them over Sam, over the life that brought him pain and misery, choose … her.

She couldn't ask him about that now, she knew. He was too unsure of what was going on, too torn between what she thought he saw as his responsibilities. It would only derail the rest of the conversation she needed to have.

"Okay," she agreed, nodding. "Okay, but you also want to be there."

His gaze cut away from her, and this time he didn't say anything, didn't deny it and she felt her stomach turn over. She didn't know how to ask him about that life, she realised, and she couldn't tell, didn't know him well enough to be able to tell if he would ever quit. Maybe, if they had enough time, had a way to deal with his life, they could work something out. Maybe. If the monsters – the past – he feared didn't kill him first, if he didn't decide that they would be safer away from him.

"I get it," she said quietly, her chest constricting a little at the conflict she was watching. Wanting to stay. Wanting to go. Needing both and unable, really, to have either. She looked down, trying to find the right way, the right words to get them through it. "You're white-knuckling it living like this. Like … like what you are is some bad, awful thing. But you're not."

She hadn't understood it, not really, the way he felt about himself. For most of the year just gone, he'd been careful to keep it hidden, along with his past, and it only came out occasionally, sometimes on the tail end of a nightmare, sometimes in a reaction. Most of the time, she wasn't sure what she'd seen. Guilt maybe? Or shame? She didn't understand what he was feeling and, she admitted to herself, on those occasions, she'd been too afraid to ask. Afraid he'd turn away. Afraid he might leave if she demanded too much of him. She'd watched in silence. Not asking.

So, every time he'd lost control, revealed something of that internal struggle, his face would close up, and he would turn away, and fight to shove it down again, and not let her see him until it was gone. They'd never talked about it; it was one of the many subjects they didn't discuss. But she knew he was scared. Scared of something that had been a part of his past, something he drank to blot out, to keep away from them.

Those first couple of months, after he'd shown up, they'd been hard. Hard for her, but harder for him, she'd thought. He'd spent most of the time locked in grief, or frustrated and angry, and she'd finally had to tell him that it wasn't working, he wasn't trying. He'd changed, almost overnight, after that conversation. And they'd had their ups and downs over the year, more ups than downs, she thought. He'd told her a little … just a sketch, really, of what had happened. Enough for her to realise what he wasn't saying, enough for her to realise that inside of him was a depth of pain she would probably never see, because he would never let her see it. She'd thought that, in time, he would be able to face it, face his memories, and share them with her. But they ran out of time, when Sam came back.

She was happy that Sam was alive. Because so much of Dean's anguish had gone with that knowledge. But, it had stopped them, their relationship, cold. Now, he had someone else to talk to. Now, he had other things to do. She didn't know if what he'd felt, how he'd been with her and Ben was real enough – _was _important_ enough to him_ – to overcome that old life, but she was pretty sure he couldn't keep living like this, wound up so tight he couldn't think clearly, could only react, uncertain and worried about everything.

They needed to work this out another way. And she needed to know, once and for all, what he felt about them. She wasn't a shrink, she didn't know how to find her way through his thoughts or deal with his pain, she hadn't even finished high school, for god's sake, but she thought they had something and she was willing to fight for that.

"But I'm not going to have this discussion every time you leave. And this is – this is just going to keep happening. So," She took a deep breath, looking up at him, "I need you to go."

She watched that hit him, saw his throat working as his gaze dropped to the counter to hide his reaction, then slowly lifted again to meet hers, his eyes shadowed and unreadable. "I can't just lose you and Ben."

Lisa shook her head. "That's not what I'm saying."

"You're saying, hit the road."

For a moment, his feelings were all there, and she felt a split-second of something, something hard and liberating and a little triumphant. She didn't want to look at that feeling too hard, because maybe it would tell her something about herself that she'd pretended not to know.

It didn't matter, she thought. She'd needed to see what he felt, and she had. He needed to make a choice, needed to put his cards on the table.

Her voice softened a little as she said, "Dean, if there's some rule that says this all has to be either/or, how about we break it?"

His head tilted a little to one side as he looked at her, lips parting slightly, trying to work out what it was she telling him.

"Me and Ben will be here," she explained. It would be easier on all of them, she'd thought. Easier for her and Ben to get on with their lives. Easier for him to have what he wanted. "And you come when you can. Just come in one piece. Okay?"

"You really think we can pull something like that off?" he asked, and she could see he was trying to buy some time, time to give his emotions a chance to settle, time to think if her tentative plan would work, time to realise that he wasn't going to lose them.

"It's worth a shot, right?" She smiled at him, and his mouth lifted slightly, though he couldn't meet her eyes again. When he did look up, one brow lifted slightly, he looked relieved.

"You scared the crap out of me, you know that?"

"Sorry."

She wasn't, not really. She'd given him a back door, an out clause, and it had scared her to death to do it, even knowing how much he needed one. And she'd needed to know how committed he was, if he wanted to be with them or not. She was glad that he did, but her heart was still thumping from the possibility that he might have just agreed with her, and gone.

"Yeah … sorry." His mouth twisted slightly as he looked at her. "When does Ben get home?"

"'Bout an hour and a half, he said." The corners of her mouth tucked up slightly, the dimples to either side appearing.

"Plenty of time." He lifted his gaze to the ceiling above them. "Feel like making it up to me?"

She laughed at the suggestive one-sided smile he offered her, and nodded, holding out her hand.


	15. Chapter 15 Canaan, 2010

_**Canaan, Vermont, November 2010**_

* * *

Rufus put the shotgun on the table, and dropped the cleaning rag over it, as the front door got pounded again. He got up slowly, and walked to the monitor, shaking his head and muttering under his breath as he saw his visitor.

Dean Winchester gave him a big smile when he opened the door, a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue in either hand.

"Surprise."

"Yeah. Get in here." Rufus opened the door wider and closed it abruptly when Dean had staggered through, bouncing off one wall slightly.

"What's the occasion?" he asked, leaving a reasonable gap between the eldest Winchester and himself, in case Dean's sense of balance went the same way as his sense of caution.

"Birthday … yours, isn't it?" He stopped at the end of the hall, looking around in confusion. "Or maybe mine … didn't you have a kitchen back here?"

Rufus sighed. "Keep going."

"Okay."

The kitchen was at the end of the hall and Dean found his way to the table, plunking the bottles onto the hard top with an action that made Rufus wince. He got two glasses from the cupboard and sat down in the chair opposite, opening a bottle and pouring a generous amount into his glass and an inch into Dean's.

"What are you doing here?"

"Working a job nearby." Dean tossed back the glass and looked around the room, a remnant of the smile still curving his mouth. "Wanted someone to drink with."

"Uh huh." Rufus tilted his head to one side, regarding him. "And what happened to drinking buddy number one?"

"Sam?" Dean looked down at the table, shrugging. "He wanted to get some sleep."

"You figured I don't sleep?"

"Figured you'd stay up for this stuff." Dean waved a hand at the bottle, nearly sending it to the floor. Rufus' hand flashed out, catching the neck and removing it from Dean's swing zone.

"Got that right." He swallowed a mouthful. "Going to tell me what happened that sent you to the liquor store?"

The last trace of Dean's smile disappeared. "Demon took a family in Hardwick."

"Hardwick? That's two hours from here." Rufus straightened up. "You drove here like this from Hardwick? You trying to kill yourself, boy?"

Dean shook his head. "I wasn't that wasted when I left. I've been sitting out the front for an hour." He looked at Rufus. "Started out with three bottles."

Rufus leaned back in the chair. "Pretty bad?"

"Yeah." Dean closed his eyes. "Pretty bad."

The sound of the phone was shrill and demanding in the silence, and Rufus started, head snapping around to stare at the black wall phone accusingly. He got up and answered it, turning to the wall as he recognised the caller.

"Yeah, I got him." He glanced back at Dean, who'd reached across the table and snagged the bottle. "No. I'll hang onto him till morning. Can't drive now anyhow. Alright, see you then."

He put the receiver back, and walked back to the table.

Dean looked at the glass and added another splash. "That Bobby?"

"Yeah." Rufus sat down. "Sam was worried when you took off."

Dean nodded, lifting the glass and taking a big swallow.

"It's not that rotgut you drink at Singer's, have some respect." Rufus topped his own glass and moved the bottle back. "What happened?"

"I told you." Dean tipped his head back.

"Mmm-hmmm."

From the moment he'd met him, Rufus had known that Dean would head down this path. Some hunters never took it on, what they did, what they saw … born without feelings, or cauterised into numbness by the event that set them on the path. Others, usually the better ones, were all scarred by it, outside and in. And then there were a few who were very good, who had the worst scars of all, most of them on the inside. They burned out, if they were lucky, like Martin in that hospital down in Oklahoma. Or they drank themselves to death. Occasionally, they figured out a way to deal, but there was no happiness in them, no possibility of peace or contentment, just the high wire over the abyss and not going too fast or too slow, and knowing that the point of return had been passed a long time ago.

He thought Dean might be one of the very good ones. Too much imagination, too much empathy. It made for a great hunter. It also made for a great headcase. He looked at the shadows under the younger man's eyes, the hollows under the cheekbones. It wasn't just the one case, driving him now, but the accumulation of too many losses and no time to get it squared away, looked at and dealt with.

"Had a lot on your plate, lately," he said quietly, downing another mouthful. Dean lifted his head, looking at him through half-lidded eyes.

"About the same as usual." He looked down at the glass in front of him. "Nothing special."

Rufus looked at him, exhaling loudly. "You met Bobby in '88, Dean."

Dean looked up. "Yeah, I think I was nine."

"I met him in '72." Rufus picked up his glass, swirling the whiskey around. "He wasn't the man you know now. Not back then. He was an ordinary guy, a mechanic with a salvage yard business and a wife." He drank a little. "Karen was possessed by a demon, when the gate in Sioux Falls opened. Bobby shot her. It very nearly broke him for good."

Dean looked away, knowing bits of the story. Not all of it.

"He started hunting after that, and he was good at it. Smart and cautious and interested in everything. We hunted in the Far East, in Europe, sometimes together, sometimes not." Rufus leaned forward, gesturing slightly with his glass. "He burned out the first time after four years. Kept trying to bury everything, refused to deal."

"This a lesson for me, Rufus?" Dean looked sourly at him.

"Might be, if you're smart enough to learn it." Rufus stared at him. "You can't bury this shit, Dean, and you can't drink it away. It's like leaving corpses around, sooner or later, they come floating back up and by that time they stink and they're full of other things, and they'll try to smother you."

He closed his eyes. "Took me a long time to learn how to deal. But that's why I've made it this far."

"You're not exactly a poster boy for mental health, Rufus." Dean finished his glass and reached for the bottle. Rufus was faster, and moved it out of reach.

"No, but I haven't burned out, and my doctor says my liver is still functioning." He smiled. "And I've been hunting a lot longer than you have."

"And how I am supposed to deal with this stuff?"

"Look at it. Accept it. Let it go." Rufus shrugged. "It's not on you if someone doesn't make it, Dean. You did your best, didn't you? That's all we can do, any of us, any time."

Dean shook his head. "Too easy."

Rufus snorted. "You think we have it tough? Try neurosurgeons – they don't get to live in our black and white world. They get to choose between saving someone's life but leaving them a vegetable, or letting them die. Or maybe even a cop, arrest someone, see the judge throw out the case two months later because of some trivial paperwork botch up and then pick up the pieces after the sonofabitch kills again."

Dean looked at him, eyes narrowed and dark with memory. "The family was a single mom, two kids. We couldn't save the mother. One of the kids was catatonic with fear, they both got carted off by Social Services." He looked at his glass, only a third left. "No happy ending, nothing but crap all the way round."

He dragged in a deep breath and looked away. Rufus watched him. He didn't know how it was Dean had ended up feeling responsible for everything, although Bobby had speculated about their upbringing from time to time. He did know that it would drag him down, overload him with the deaths and the failures, the mistakes and those moments of plain bad luck, until he couldn't go any further, until he longed for death, the peace and quiet of a dark womb in the earth.

"You want to give it up?" Rufus looked at his glass. "Go ahead. You got some skills, you could get a regular job."

The look he got was a mixture of disbelief and disgust. "Didn't Bobby fill you in on how well I did at that?"

"Must have missed that update." Rufus raised a brow. "What happened?"

"Djinn came after me, Sam was back." He finished his whiskey. "Didn't work out all that well."

"How long where you out?"

"Nearly a year." Dean looked at the bottle.

"And before the djinn and Sam? How was that?"

Dean was silent for a long moment. "I started to feel like …," He trailed off uncertainly.

"Like you'd lost your purpose? Like it wasn't really you anymore?" Rufus prompted him, and watched Dean's gaze come up to meet his own.

"How'd you know that?"

"Tried it myself, a while ago." Rufus shook his head. "You can't go from this life to completely normal. It's not possible and you end up hurting everyone around you trying."

He watched the expressions cross Dean's face at the words. "Yeah, see you already found that out too."

"So I get a choice of burning out, turning into you or hurting the people that I care about?" Dean growled at him, his eyes cutting away.

"Pretty much." Rufus slid the bottle back toward him. "But if you turn into me, at least you survive."

Dean looked around the shabby room. "If this is the price of survival, it's not such an appealing prospect."

Rufus' teeth flashed white against his skin. "'Course, you got at least a couple more years before you really start to feel that black dog nippin' at your heels, Dean. Plenty of time to make a decision."

He stood up, picking up the bottles and moving them to the counter, taking his glass to the sink.

"Couch in the living room is comfortable." He looked down at the man hunched at the table. "I got things to do later today, so do you."

Dean stared into his glass, then tossed the whiskey back, holding the glass up against his lips until the final drop fell. He walked slowly to the sink and put the glass into it, then followed Rufus down the hall. The couch was long, and comfortable and he crumpled onto it.

From the doorway, Rufus could see his profile, outlined against the dark fabric by the faint light from the streetlights outside. His eyes were open.

When he'd met the hunter, he'd thought he'd be dead within a year. Dean felt it all, too deep. He'd been surprised to see him again, more surprised when he'd gotten to know about him.

There was a vein of caring in him, hidden mostly, visible in the choices he made, the things he did. He spent more time trying to be someone else, Rufus thought, having a pretty idea of who that someone was, than he did being himself. That was going to backfire on the kid somewhere down the road.

Turning back to the kitchen, he poured himself another shot, and screwed the lid back on the bottle, moving it to the back of a cupboard. He didn't think Dean'd come searching for it in the night, but there was no point leaving temptation in anyone's path.

Bobby had burned out three more times after that first one. More or less for the same reasons. Caring too much. Feeling it too much. He'd thought the bastard would die before he learned. Picking up his glass, he turned and looked through the doorway to the living, to the unmoving man he could see there. Dean probably would die before he learned, feeling a pang at the thought. The load was the load, but you had to learn how to carry it, what to keep and what to let go of. He had a feeling Dean hadn't let go of anything.


	16. Chapter 16 Dearborn, 2011

_**Dearborn, Michigan, October 2011**_

* * *

Jo stood in the shadows of the room, watching. She'd felt the compulsion and had been pulled unceremoniously from the afterlife by this god, who still wandered the earth long after his worshippers had died and turned to dust. Osiris had some kind of control over certain things. She couldn't quite make out the shape of that control yet but it felt powerful. In her mind was an image, a flame. She didn't understand it. Her death had been earlier, bleeding out in her mother's arms. Dean's was to be in heat and fire. He would fight to live. Everything she knew about him told her that.

Dean watched his brother leave the room, and poured the thick line of salt around himself in a circle, then he straightened up, looked around.

"You can come out now."

Jo looked at his back, the slump of his shoulders. What was wrong with him? It couldn't be the god's decree – he'd never before worried about the power of the things he'd gone up against. "You know I'd never do this."

"I know." He stared at the floor.

"I guess it's his thing. Some kind of twisted eye for an eye." She walked slowly around him, waiting for him to move. She realised he had no weapon with him in the circle, no shotgun loaded with salt, no iron. Was he just going to stand there, accepting that he was going to die, that she'd been sent to kill him. Why wasn't he fighting this?

"It's okay." His eyes were almost empty, when he turned his head to look at her. A softening, she felt, for her. Nothing there for himself.

"No, it's not," she said, looking away. It was hard to tell him, even now. "You deserve better."

His attention sharpened and he looked at her, really looked at her for the first time. "No, you did. You deserved better, Jo."

Her head snapped up and she tried to see him more clearly, without the shadows of the Veil between them. What had he been telling himself, in the years since she'd died? That it was his fault? Had he convinced himself that he'd somehow persuaded to come against her will?

Had he truly forgotten what she'd said to him, to Sam, to her mother, lying on the floor of that store, knowing that she could do some good before the inevitability of her death? This wasn't the Dean she remembered. Guilt, yes, sure, but not lying down, not giving up.

"Dean, my life was good. Really."

"He was right, you know. That dick judge. About me."

She frowned as he swept over what she'd said, as if it didn't matter, or, she considered uneasily, as if … as if he hadn't heard it. She turned away, trying to see what other protection they had laid about the room. She couldn't see anything.

"No, he wasn't," she said. "You think no one had a choice but you?"

She was spirit, compelled to be here, compelled to follow the orders of the ancient god, and she hadn't thought in terms of life and death, of flesh and blood, for a long time. Her thoughts weren't coming in linear patterns anymore. She didn't want to be here, not for this, not for him, it wasn't fair, it wasn't justice, and she had no reason for revenge.

And he wasn't fighting, she could see that he wasn't going to fight for his life. How was it that he wanted to die now? What had happened to him in the time between? How could he think that he should feel all this guilt when it had been her choice? She struggled to think of a way to break through to him, to make him see that he didn't have to carry this load, that it wasn't and had never been his to carry. There was no time to ask him, no time to make him see that he was wrong.

"You were a kid." A sudden bleakness in his voice, as if he'd been swallowed by a wave of guilt.

Is that what he'd thought? That she'd been a kid who hadn't known what she was doing? Was that why he'd never pursued those occasional half-joking come-ons? A distant emotion, rusty with lack of use, threaded through her. It'd been a crush and that was all but she'd wanted more, and she hadn't stirred him. Just been a kid to him.

"Not true," she said, crossing her arms over her chest, that old gesture from life almost automatic. "I knew what I was doing."

"You and Sam," he said softly. "I just – you know, hunters are never kids. I never was. I didn't even stop to think about it."

And again, it was as if he hadn't heard her. Where had that even come from? Him and Sam, they'd been raised together; he knew her story … what was going on? She wanted to slap him. She wanted to get into his face, and grab him and shake him and tell him he hadn't made the choices for them, they'd all been adults, capable of making their own choices, for taking responsibility for those choices. She couldn't move, those words wouldn't come out, for some reason. Goddammit, there wasn't enough time.

"It's not your fault," she said, wondering if her voice was as loud as it seemed to her, staring at him. "It wasn't on you."

"No, but I didn't want to do it alone." His gaze cut away, a flickering wry smile crossing his face. "Who does?"

His gaze dropped again. "No, the right thing would have been to send your ass back home to your mom."

Her shock beat through her with the same insistent beat as the sense of Time, the god's will ticking away inside of her somewhere.

How had Dean got so fogged in by all that had gone wrong over the years that he'd forgotten that Ellen had been there too? Nothing he was saying made any sense.

"Mom was there, Dean, don't you remember?" she said, frowning at him. "She knew what we were up against."

He looked at her for a moment, then away, his expression confused. "You both … Ellen … Jo … you'd be alive if I'd just sent you home, Jo."

"No, we were –"

"Sent your ass home," he said, rubbing over one eye with his fingertips. "Sent Sam back to college. Died when I was supposed to, instead of Dad. I didn't do anything right, none of it, it was my fault, what happened. All of it."

Whatever he was seeing, Jo thought, it wasn't real. Or at the very least, it'd been exaggerated far out of proportion to what had really happened. She didn't know how to break through to him, to make him remember how it'd been.

"Send me home, Dean? Like to have seen you try," she told him, wondering if there was another to get past the guilt in him, to break him free of the loop.

The light-hearted response raised a slight smile. He folded his arms over his chest, ducking his head. and it was just a glimpse of Dean, the real Dean, a shred of him shining out of the darkness. She walked around him. "He was right about one thing."

"What, your massive crush on me?" he asked, looking up and smirking a little at her.

That was the old Dean too, a bit of him, anyway. She looked away, smiling at his ego, in spite of herself. "Shut up."

It was an answer, of sorts, she thought. The only one she thought she'd ever get. Old history. Done and gone, and there was no time for the past, at least not that aspect. She had to tell him what was important. What he needed to know.

"You carry all kinds of crap you don't have to, Dean. Things that don't belong to you. Things that aren't a part of your load."

He heard that, his gaze falling, his face tightening, the jaw muscle twitching. It didn't have the impact she needed.

"It kinda gets clearer when you're dead," she added. He needed that clarity now, she thought. Not when he was dead.

"Clearer, huh?" he said, eyes closing briefly, then opening as he looked at her. "Well, in that case, you should be able to see that I am ninety percent ... crap," he admitted, swallowing against his feelings, the half-assed smile not even getting close to his eyes.

He's afraid, she thought suddenly. Afraid it was true. Afraid it was all he was.

"I get rid of that, what then?"

"You really want to die not knowing?" She stared at him. "Dean, that's not all you are."

"Jo, all I ever did was kill everyone I ever cared about."

"No," she said, fighting against the compulsion that was pushing at her, harder and harder. "No, you didn't."

Where had he gone? Where the hell was the man she'd been in love with? Not this guy, not this guy standing in front of her, telling her what a loser he was, filled with pain and a black despair so deep he couldn't even be honest, with her or himself. She wanted to ask him what he thought he was doing. What Sam would do when he found himself alone. Why he was giving up. None of those questions would come out of her mouth, and she saw the god's control then … control over the victim … and control over the executioner.

She looked at the window and ice formed across the pane, creeping slowly from side to side, the glass freezing then shattering. Wind poured in, sweeping around the room and breaking the line around him. Not of her doing, she thought distantly, not of her choice. His lighter was in his coat pocket and her hand found it easily.

_Justice must be served. The weight of his guilt is the only truth. The burden is heavy. He will die._

She heard the god's voice, felt the bands of an other-worldly will tighten around her.

"Dean."

"Yeah." He looked down.

"It's time."

There was no more time. No more time to make him run. To make him fight. She was beside the stove and her fingers closed around the knobs, turning the gas on, unable to smell it, but seeing the movement as it burst up and spilled over the hobs, heavier than air, sinking to the floor.

_Dean, run!_ She wanted to scream it out but her voice was gone. He stood there, watching her, a wretched desolation filling his eyes and some kind of helpless acceptance holding him still. A desire for penance? Redemption? A fatalistic belief that he deserved nothing better? Or was it Osiris? Magnifying the guilt he felt, jacking up his shame and his pain, and suggesting, over and over, that dying would be better than living? His lighter was heavy in her hand.

_Dean, you don't deserve this_, she wailed, the Veil trembling with the force of her anguish. Going up against the devil, that'd been an end run and she'd known it and her mother had known it. The wounds from the hellhound had been too deep, and she hadn't flinched then from facing the end, had tried to turn it to an advantage, to give the others something … and to give herself something, some meaning. He hadn't put her there, and she couldn't understand why he thought he had.

Dying had made it clearer. Had made everything clear. And she'd never once regretted knowing him.

She was going to kill him, in an explosion to match the way she'd died … but the god hadn't known, hadn't known that she'd died before the blast, had died of the wounds of the hellhounds before her mother had pressed the button. Osiris had plucked the memory from Dean, she realised suddenly. An old god, but not an omniscient one. And _Dean_ had thought she'd died in the explosion, _Dean_ had thought her mother had killed them both, to give him and Sam the time to get away. He hadn't known how those last few seconds had played out.

_JUSTICE!?_ The accusation was a scream in her mind. This wasn't _justice_, it was _false_, _wrong_, a _mistake_!

He was going to die for nothing.


	17. Chapter 17 Junction City, 2012

_**Junction City, Kansas, March 2012**_

* * *

Garth drove steadily, not fast, through the night. The road was wet and the hiss of the tyres over the asphalt was a soothing noise, a background to his thoughts on the case. Beside him, scrunched slightly in the narrow bucket seat of the Pacer, Dean stared out at the road unwinding in their headlights, his deep voice a low murmur just audible over the car's noises. Garth was getting used to his process, this apparent rambling over the facts, over what they'd seen and heard, knew it didn't require a response from him until something snagged Dean's attention hard enough to warrant a discussion. He glanced over at him as his voice got a little louder, indicating that had just happened.

"So, kid in the woods sees something that nobody else does. Then Tess sees a monster, and Jim doesn't. What's the thread?"

"Hmm. Well, certain mutants see infrared," he offered after a moment's thought. He caught the slow sideways turn of Dean's head in his peripheral vision, recognising the poorly-hidden exasperation in the gesture.

He'd heard a lot about Dean Winchester and his brother, Sam, before Bobby had called him, back in November, to give the oldest Winchester back up on a case in Vegas. There were a lot of rumours floating around about the brothers, rumours of demon deals and Dean rising from Hell, rumours of demon blood and Sam starting the Apocalypse. Bobby had squashed a few of them, had given him a little detail on others. He'd been pretty intimidated at the thought of working with Dean, if the truth were to be told. But when he'd walked into the diner, Dean'd been just a guy. From what he'd heard and what his imagination had conjured, he'd been expecting Thor or Odin, or even an Andre-the-Giant-esque figure, complete with lightning bolts at the very least.

The tired and worried-looking man in his early thirties who'd dropped into the chair opposite and handed him a paper had been a surprise. Bobby had warned him about Dean's temper, but so far, he hadn't seen any sign that it was any worse than anyone else's. He had seen a lot of control, a lot of repression, and a lot of eye-rolling, but the man had been and had remained professional, and had even, on rare occasions, let a bit of charm slip out.

"Grown-up drinks," Dean said speculatively. "Tess chugged her mom's, and vic number one was plastered."

"Right." Garth considered that. "So ... whoa."

He turned to look at Dean, getting the familiar rush from a breakthrough idea that he was pretty sure was right. "Monster you got to be drunk to see. Cool!"

Another thought occurred to him, relating to how that might work out in reality. "Also ... hard to fight."

He heard the little scritchings of the lid of the flask that Dean carried being unscrewed, saw the upward tilt in the corner of his eye, and glanced over, seeing another mouthful of the contents of the flask go down his partner's throat. A lot of hunters who'd been around a while drank, it was no big. But Dean drank a bit more than most, he thought. Maybe quite a bit more. Didn't seem to affect him. He'd never felt the need himself, preferring to unwind with some calming meditation, a long, cold green iced tea and maybe afterwards, the funny papers. But, he acknowledged honestly, alcohol had a lot of weird side-effects on his body.

* * *

In a life where over ninety percent of the participants were driven by the past, by revenge and guilt, fear and anger, Garth Fitzgerald IV was the exception that proved the rule.

He'd stumbled into hunting one day, four years ago, when his girlfriend had moved into a place with a poltergeist. With no experience and no knowledge, he'd just tried to find out whatever he could about the spirit that was making life hell in the little rent-controlled apartment on the lower East Side, and had managed to vanquish it for good. It had been, he knew now, the easiest of all entries into the life of hunting; the spirit hadn't been malevolent, just confused, and had tolerated his repeated clumsy attempts at cleansing with a remarkable amount of patience.

When it was done, he'd found that he was hooked. By the experience. By the opening of a new world that had lain unseen beside the old. By the idea that he could really help people, that he might've found the one thing he was supposed to be doing. The few cases he'd managed to find in his first year had been on a gentle experience curve and by the time he'd run into something truly difficult and very lethal, he'd had enough experience to handle it …well, just.

It had been over a year before he'd met another hunter. That incident had been an eye-opener. A frightening eye-opener. Since then, he'd met good hunters and bad hunters. Those who'd managed to hang onto their humanity, and those who were almost worse than the creatures they pursued. None of them had had all their ducks in a row, though. They operated by instinct and emotion and had cut themselves off from any kind of normality. Not, he thought, through choice, but from the haphazard way they lived their lives.

* * *

Sliding another sideways glance at the man beside, he thought Dean was a good hunter. And he still had a firm grip on his humanity. But the life was killing him by inches. Garth could see it in the too-clipped words, in the persistent drinking, in the haunted expressions that sometimes crossed his face, showed in his eyes. It was more than being driven, he thought, Dean was being flogged. And he didn't seem to have any idea that it didn't have to be like that. Back in November, the hunter had seemed better. He wondered what had happened in between to have jacked up the desperation he sometimes noticed in Dean's eyes now.

Exhaling audibly, Dean screwed the lid back on. " Just getting in the zone." He glanced sideways at Garth. "You are strictly on wine coolers."

"Hey, I love those." Garth grinned, flicking a look at him, knowing the hunter's opinion of him and not caring. It wasn't personal. Somewhere, well down deep, Garth thought Dean's frustration came from worrying that other hunters weren't careful enough, weren't experienced or skilled enough. He was probably right, he considered.

"Anything sweet," he added amiably, as a memorable evening with a bottle of crème de menthe came back and he laughed softly. "Whoo!"

He didn't miss the soft sigh beside him, or the sound of the flask lid being undone again. The guy really needed to lighten up and smell the roses, try life outside of the narrow circle he kept himself in. He'd been trying to think of a way to get Dean to open up a little, let some of the poisons out, for the last couple of days.

He had a feeling that just initiating a conversation along those lines might bring out the much-mentioned but so far unseen temper. He also had the feeling that just having a conversation like that wouldn't do Dean much good. Whatever was eating him, whatever was driving him, it probably needed years of daily sessions with a good psychotherapist, not just a quick conversation driving along a black road with another hunter.

"So, uh, what's with the grody flask anyway? Lucky charm?

"It's Bobby's."

Garth heard the warning implicit in Dean's tone. Bobby was one of several subjects that Dean wouldn't talk about, not in any depth. He watched the taillights of the car in front of him as a recent memory hit him. _Dean. And the flask. And the squawking from the EMF_. He'd thought the gauge was faulty, thought Dean's was too. But maybe not.

"Really?" He stared at the road, pondering how he could raise this subject without irritating, or worse, enraging the man riding shotgun beside him. "'Cause, um ... you think there's a possibility that Bobby's riding your wave?

"No. We gave him a hunter's wake," Dean said abruptly, a clear injunction to stop this line of conversation right there.

Garth weighed up the warnings against the reality of the situation. He could let it drop, could leave it alone but what good would that do? Pretending things didn't exist worked for John Q … it didn't work so well for hunters.

"Yeah, I-I burned my cousin Brandon, and he stayed stuck. We didn't find what was holding him to this plane for months. Turned out to be a pair of sunglasses." He glanced at Dean nervously. "Don't know what it was about those shades, man but he clung onto them."

He swallowed at the stony silence in the car, trying to come with more examples where just burning the remains didn't get everything. "And – and – and they got ghosts in India, and they cremate everybody over there."

He could feel Dean's impatience growing beside him, the guy was practically radiating annoyance. "It's just instinct, but maybe there is EMF around here. It just ain't the job."

There was a gusty exhale from beside him.

"All right, we're not gonna talk about this, okay? Not in the middle of work," Dean voice rose. Under the words, under the gesture and the tone, Garth heard something else. Uncertainty.

"Sorry," he said quickly, understanding flooding into him like a clean blast of light. Dean wasn't sure that Bobby had passed on. In fact, he definitely wasn't sure that the man wasn't around. Hadn't stayed on. And he was worried about it.

He wondered why he was trying to deny it. It couldn't be that hard to find out, one way or another, for sure, could it? Any good medium could have told him. And Bobby'd had a reason to stay, he knew. He hadn't known the old man for that long, just a couple of years, but he knew people, knew how to read them, and Bobby would have died for the Winchesters, that had been apparent in every word he'd spoken of them, every expression on his face when he'd talked of them. He might well have wanted to stick around, try and help them, or protect them.

Was it the core of responsibility he could see in the hunter, he wondered? Did Dean feel a responsibility to Bobby? They hadn't told him much about the way Bobby'd died, just that one of the levi monsters had popped him. The fact that Dean wouldn't discuss it and Sam felt compelled to keep quiet as well seemed like a good indication that they felt somewhat responsible. Or Dean did.

"You know," he said. "Bobby and me had some good talks."

There was no response from the passenger seat and he hurried on, "Just, you know, shootin' the breeze about the life an' all."

"Mmm."

It wasn't exactly encouragement to go on, Garth thought, but it wasn't a total shut-down either.

"He told me he had a lotta regrets," he continued. "Things he thought he could've done differently, done smarter –"

"Garth."

"But he also told me that he thought his life was something he didn't feel ashamed about –"

"Garth, I don't –"

"Just, listen, okay? Just hear me out for one second," he said, flicking a look at him. "He said if he died right then, he wouldn't feel like he'd been shortchanged. He got a lotta living done, Dean. I mean, maybe he changed his mind about that, but I know for sure, he knew what the risks to this life were all about."

For a moment, he thought the hunter wasn't going to answer. Then he caught the movement of Dean's head in the periphery of his vision.

"I get what you're trying to do, and I-I appreciate the sentiment," Dean said, his voice very low. "But don't. Just … don't. You don't know anything about this, or about Bobby or what he meant to me and Sam. You don't know and you're never gonna know, Garth. Okay?"

It wasn't a threat. It wasn't even a warning, Garth thought, swallowing a little harder at the carefully neutral tone the hunter'd used. It was an order.

The insistent ring of Dean's cell broke the discomforting silence between them.

"Just hope that fire did the trick," he said under his breath, wondering how long it might take for a ghost like Bobby's to become disillusioned with being stuck on the earthly plane, unable to do much more than watch helplessly as events moved along without his input, as people he loved died and passed over, as the injustice of his death went without vengeance. He wondered what it would do to the man sitting next to him to have to lay his ghost to rest, if it came to that. Nothing good, he thought. Nothing good at all.

"Hey, Sam." Dean listened for a moment. "Yeah, got it. We're on our way."


	18. Chapter 18 Brookfield, 2012

_**Brookfield, Missouri, May 2012**_

* * *

They stood on the soft dirt, in front of the tarp-covered car. The boatshed had been Frank's idea. His aunt's-cousin's-best friend's ex-husband's place, in Delaware. A holiday home on a little, unremarkable lake, unused for the last ten years. Dean looked at the beige-covered shape and felt a flood of relief that she was still there, untouched, just as he'd left her. He'd missed her so much this last year it had felt like losing another member of his family, another friend. At least if he was going out this time, she'd be there, not left forgotten here.

"Thanks for the lift." He glanced back at Cas, his mind already going over the logistics of how he was going to pull the next twenty four hours together. With the car, he thought they could make an entrance, something fairly obvious, that would give him and Sam a nice diversion to slip by unnoticed. He wondered if Meg could drive.

"My pleasure." The angel hesitated for a moment, watching him step toward the car. "Dean."

Dean turned back at the implicit request in the word, feeling his irritability with the angel rise again. He understood, he really did. The times he'd wanted no more part in the mess around them, the times he'd longed to be able to ditch the whole thing and go on a year-long bender that would end with him in a coffin … he got it. It didn't stop him from wishing that the angel hadn't picked this time to throw in the towel. David and Goliath stories were great reading, not so much fun when you were in them, playing David. "Yes, we've been over it. I get it – you can't help."

Castiel ignored the irritation in Dean's voice. "If we attack Dick, and fail, you and Sam die heroically, correct?"

Dean looked at him uneasily, wondering which tangent he was going to be expected to follow. He didn't have a lot of time for more of the angel's peculiar mental processes right now. "I don't know. I guess."

"And at best, I die trying to fix my own stupid mistake," Castiel mused, thinking through the possibilities. "Or ... I don't die – I'm brought back again. I see now. It's a punishment resurrection. It's worse every time." He looked at Dean.

Dean stared back at him, eyes narrowed as he tried to fathom what Cas was attempting to get across with this rambling discourse on resurrections and repentance. He missed the old Cas, blunt, to the point of unsociability. "I'm sorry." He shook his head. "Uh, we're talking about God crap, right?"

"I'm not good luck, Dean," Castiel said.

Dean looked at him, running a hand over his face as he finally got what the angel was trying to say. Not good luck? No. Who was? Necessary though, he was necessary if they were going to have a snowball's of catching Dick in the one blind spot he had, and ganking the monster, sending his murdering ass back to Purgatory. The angel was their only ace. They needed him. "Yeah, but you know what? Bottom of the ninth, and you're the only guy left on the bench ... sorry, but I'd rather have you. Cursed or not."

His gaze cut away. The whole discussion was irrelevant. None of them were good luck, all of them were cursed, and it didn't matter. The job was the job, it wouldn't go away, and this was their one chance to finish it. "And anyway, nut up, all right? We're all cursed. I seem like good luck to you?"

He saw the change in the angel's expression, as if Cas had just discovered something. It made him more nervous than he already was. "What?"

Castiel looked down, a very small smile curving his mouth. "Well, I don't want to make you uncomfortable," he raised his head and looked at Dean. "But I detect a note of forgiveness."

Dean looked away, huffing slightly at the words. Forgiveness. What the fuck was that anyway? He hadn't made a decision about it. He hadn't thought about it. What Cas had done to Sam, to everyone, in Heaven and on earth, had been …

_Human_.

The thought hit him suddenly, entire and obvious. The dumbass angel hadn't been acting out of spite or malice, just … plain need. He knew about making decisions like that. Without thought for the consequences, for the future. He'd made one or two like that himself. And paid for them. And lived with the fallout. He pushed the thoughts away. _After_. After they'd killed Dick and gotten rid of the levis, he could get this crap straight for himself. Right now, he needed to get moving.

"Yeah, well, I'm probably going to die tomorrow, so," he said shortly, mouth twisting as he thought of how close to the reality that was likely to be. It was highly likely he wouldn't be getting his me-time after tomorrow.

"Well, I'll go with you," Castiel said firmly. "And I'll do my best."

Dean looked at him for a moment, then away, fighting against the relief he could feel welling up in him. Without the angel, it would have been a futile suicide run, tilting at a windmill that couldn't possibly be brought down. With Cas, well, there was definitely a very small chance that they'd actually be able to kill the thing, if absolutely everything else went right. They'd probably still die, but that would be a small price to pay if they could get rid of Dick.

"Thanks." He couldn't spare the time … or the control … to say anything else.

It was a start, he guessed, to Castiel returning to his old self. He thought of what he'd said to Kevin. _I think maybe they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just ... breaks them apart._ Maybe he'd been wrong about that. Maybe they just had lower pain thresholds than people. Less tolerance for the mess and muck and mayhem that most people had to face on a daily basis. And, of course, no souls, let's not forget about that. His brother hadn't done so good without a soul.

"So ..." Castiel said in a low voice, looking around them furtively, sliding his gaze back to Dean. "Can I ask the plan?"

Dean looked at him. Was Cas developing a sense of humour? He hid a brief smile and looked at the covered car.

"Well, according to Crowley," he looked back at the angel, "Dick knows we're coming. So we're going to announce ourselves. Big."

_And we're going to succeed this time_, he thought, _we're going to deal with this and get payback for Bobby_. The need for that vengeance burned along his veins like fire. With the head cut off, the body would flounder and he and Sam could do mop up duty and then … then he was going somewhere … he wasn't sure where yet, but somewhere he didn't have to think about anything and just do … nothing. For at least a week. He didn't think he'd last much past a week, but the thought of it was like an oasis in the desert. He pulled the tarp from the car, and opened the trunk. Just him and his baby, away from everything and everybody.

This time, he was going to get a prize for sticking his neck yet again to save the world.

* * *

_**AN** In the original posting of this story, this was the last chapter, Dean's view. However, since 2012, there have been a couple of other events and characters that have seen Dean in a different light and those will be added. Hope you're enjoying the disparate looks at the character._


	19. Chapter 19 Purgatory, 2013

**Chapter 19 Purgatory, 2013**

* * *

Benny stopped as the trees thinned out, the man beside him making a quarter-turn to watch behind them. In the unvarying silvery light, the woods were ghostly, mists rising from the damp leaf-litter that cushioned the ground, silent but for the muted drips of moisture from the leaves and needles.

They were being stalked, and the vampire knew the man knew it too, feeling a low-voltage nimbus of energy radiating from him, seeing it in the tension of the broad shoulders, visible from the corner of his eye.

The first one burst from a scrubby copse of saplings to his right; another, a second later, leaping from the outcropping of granite that pushed through the thin soils on the hillside. The music started, as it always did and Benny watched it race toward him, peripherally aware that Dean had taken a long stride to one side, the vicious-looking stone axe he carried swinging high.

Pale, grey skin and a mouth bristling with teeth, pointed and filthy and blackened. Vampire against vampire, he thought, the thought vanishing as he lifted his mace and calculated distance and speed and impetus. Forbidden in the other world but a matter of course down here.

Like a dance, it was the music that played in his head that kept him cool and unemotional, kept him steady and focussed on his targets. The first one lost his head the moment he was within range and two more raced out of the concealing fog, teeth bared and high-pitched, gleeful screams, distorted and swallowed in the deadening effect of mist and woods. The music kept time and he ducked and rolled, kicked and swung, catching occasional glimpses of the man as he moved fast and sure, dispatching the monsters with economy and the grace reserved for those who were still alive.

He stopped over the third body on his side, the tune whistled out with a certain jaunty defiance, watching Dean take the head of the seventh, the edge of the axe biting deep into the ground and the vampire's strangled scream cut off abruptly. Benny turned slowly, watching the forest, hearing the man get up behind him, a light touch on one shoulder signifying it wasn't over yet.

As he whistled and watched, he allowed himself the slight astonishment he always felt at seeing the man fight. Dean's instincts were razor-keen, some kind of precognitive warning, he'd thought, the first time he'd seen it, though the man had denied the idea of any such thing. He was strong, and very fast. He had to be, Benny considered, his eyes narrowing as he saw the mist swirl on one side of the clearing. Everything down here – and what they'd been, up in the real world – was faster than human, most of them very significantly so.

He felt Dean freeze behind, and held his position, back to back. The creatures came together, silently this time, one from either side of the clearing, mouths open and hands curled into claws, death in their too-bright eyes. Stepping aside lightly, Benny watched Dean move an equal distance in the opposite direction, forcing their opponents to brake hard, swinging around to face them. Both lost their balance … and then their heads.

The vampire gave a small, admiring shake of his head. Between the two of them, they didn't confer on what to do or how to do it. Along with the melody that took him over unconsciously in those situations, it seemed they both just knew what the other would do, where they would be and maybe, he thought, with an inward chuckle, to those they faced, it looked like a dance, a lethal, macabre dance, between the two of 'em … but in those seconds of combat, when every nerve was operating at its highest levels and there was no time to think or strategise or consider, blow followed blow and aim was instinctive and it was life itself that was the prize, and they just … somehow … knew.

Turning around, he looked at the human. Dean rocked back on his heels, straightening up easily, blood and dirt caking his face and clothing.

"Piece of cake."

"Easy as pie," Benny agreed readily, looking at the headless bodies that littered the clearing. "You never did say where you learned to fight like that, _chèr_."

"There's a river down there," Dean said, waving his axe down the hill. "Right?"

"Right," Benny confirmed. "Not a big one."

"Don't need a big one," the man said, rolling his shoulders reflexively as he headed down the hill.

"There's a touch of military training about you, Dean," Benny continued, following him down the hill. "But that's not all it is."

Glancing back over his shoulder, Dean's grin flashed bright in the muck that covered most of his face. "What's it to you?"

"Just curious, tha's all," Benny told him. "Haven't met a human like you. You have a feel for killing, like one of us."

He saw the man's step falter a little, and cursed himself inwardly as those words replayed in his head. He hadn't meant it to come out quite like that, it'd been more of a compliment to his mind.

"Dean –"

The man increased the length of his stride and disappeared between the thin trees as the slope steepened without looking back or answering.

Benny quickened his pace, slipping on the pine needles that carpeted the narrow crevices between the rocks.

* * *

At the bottom of the narrow valley, the river wound between high banks on one side and a gravelly beach on the other and as he came out of the scrubby growth, he saw Dean dump his boots on the beach and wade out into the water, dropping full length and flat into the shallow stream when he reached the middle.

Crouching beside the river's edge, Benny scooped up handfuls and washed the blood from his hands and arms, splashing more over his face, the cold bite taking the last of the fight's tensions and fatigue along with the crusted dirt and blood.

He rocked back on his heels, distantly aware of his senses stretching out through their surroundings, listening for an untoward sound, peripheral vision keenly acute in search of movement that shouldn't be there. After so long, it was a part of him, welded on, sunk in bone-deep and he could no more have controlled those reactions than he could've controlled the beating of his heart. If he'd had one.

"This searchin' for the angel, it's wasting time," he called out.

Dean rolled over in the flow of the river, rubbing both hands over his face and back through his hair before he lifted his head to look at Benny.

"Told you it wasn't negotiable."

"Yeah, you did," Benny said, watching him get to his feet and wade back out of the flow. "Never told me why that might be."

"What's it to you? Doesn't affect our deal," Dean said, taking off his jacket and dropping it over a rock.

"It matters to me."

He watched Dean turn to face him as he pulled off the soaked shirt and wrung it out, and wondered at the man's ability to be so transparent about some things and so damnably opaque when it came to others.

"Why?"

"My hide's hanging on t'line here too," Benny told him with a shrug. "You're good, we make a pretty good team, truth is, but sooner or later we're gonna run into something we can't handle. I want to know why we're risking it when we could be on our way out."

He thought he was going to get an argument, but Dean ducked his head, turning away and shaking out the crushed shirt, dropping it over another boulder before he turned back.

"He –" he started to say, stopping and licking his lips, then shaking his head. "He's a friend."

"Who left as soon as you hit the ground."

Dean glanced at him, brows drawing together a little. "I don't know what happened with that," he said, his voice level and without inflexion. "Maybe something got him, maybe he had to zap out – I don't –"

"Know," Benny finished, inclining his head. "Yeah, got that."

He watched the man's face as the silence between them stretched out. The angel had something over him, he thought. Something that wouldn't let go.

Over the past few weeks – or however long it'd been in this place that had no markers for time – he'd noticed a few things about the human he was travelling with. He was hard, harder than the monsters here, most of them, and clear in his head about what he had to do to stay alive. There'd been no hesitations. No internal debates over right or wrong. As much as he'd seen that his earlier choice of words had hit the man, he couldn't pretend that it wasn't also accurate.

At the same time, he'd seen things that'd seemed to contradict the impression. Things that might be, he considered, explained away by the need to keep his get-out-of-Purgatory ticket alive and kickin' or might not. Somehow, he thought that a lot of Dean's actions hadn't stemmed purely from that.

There was loyalty. And there was a diamond-hard determination, deep down inside, to never give in and never give up. And he'd seen doubt. Not about what he was doing here, Benny thought. About what he'd done elsewhere, up in the world where the sun shone.

Dean leaned against a boulder and pulled his tee shirt off, hands wringing every drop of water from the torn and filthy cloth.

"It's a long story, alright?" he said to the vampire, snapping out the shirt and pulling it back on. There was no sunlight to dry the clothes here in this non-world. Or warm the skin. It wasn't cold. Or hot. Or anything.

Didn't they all have long stories, Benny wondered with a humourless inward smile? Long stories full of crap and pain and nothing that could ever come out of them but more misery and then death?

"You owe this angel somethin'?" he asked.

"No. I –"

A number of expressions flickered over the man's face, too fast to see or work out, there and gone like the shadows of clouds.

"Maybe I do," Dean admitted, his tone indicating that the concession hadn't been thought all the way through yet.

Or maybe, Benny mused, looking at the discomfort on his face, maybe the angel owed him somethin'. Something he was having a problem with figuring out for himself.

"Debt's a hard thing to have hangin' over you," he offered diffidently. "'Specially for a man who seems the type who pays his debts."

It was another thing he'd noticed about the human.

"But you, uh, trust this angel," he pressed a little harder. "Trust him enough to risk our one an' only way out."

The expression that filled the green eyes as they lifted to meet his was complicated, Benny decided. It sure as hell wasn't a clear indication of total trust.

"I trust him enough," Dean told him and he wondered what that meant, something held back, some uncertainty there.

"Heard angels have no souls," Benny said, looking up the river. "No soul. No conscience."

"You wanna talk to me about your conscious, Benny?" Dean asked, his mouth twisting up to one side derisively.

"Well, heh, no," the vampire said, his eyes crinkling in response. "It's nothing worth talking about, but, Dean, I got one."

"Yeah, well, so's the angel. He – he tries to do the right thing," Dean said, getting up and grabbing his shirt. "We should get going."

Getting to his feet, Benny followed the man slowly along the bank and up into the trees. Trying to do the right thing didn't always equate to doing the right thing, he knew from bitter experience. That'd seemed to be the gist of what the man was struggling with too.

He'd lived awhile, up there in the sun and the rain, and he'd been here a long time, seeing what became of the monsters with human souls. He'd been observant and he'd seen that most folk tried to do the right thing, tried to live a life that wouldn't make them ashamed when it came time to walk to the pearly gates and knock. Many didn't. Some couldn't see those differences, those essential differences between right and wrong. Some saw them but didn't care.

They climbed to the ridge line and Benny took point, moving between the trees like a shadow, the man behind him following like a ghost. Dean, he thought, was one of those people who knew, maybe from the moment they were born, the difference and was incapable of choosing the wrong way. Conscience or soul, what governed that innate knowledge wasn't really important. The vampire knew that the man had made some bad choices along the way. He could see the scars, the deep, unhealed wounds that lay well beneath the surface, and those that were more recent. But bad choices were sometimes still the right choices, for the people who were loved, for the world. Bad choices were sometimes only bad for the one who had to make them, sacrifice freely made but costing everything.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the man walking behind him. The armour he wore was thick and heavy but patched and piecemeal, he thought. Broken too often. Armour was the response to too much pain. An attempt to protect what was left. He wondered, a little bleakly, if Dean was able to shed it anymore, to let anyone in, to feel at all. He thought he might be. There were still chinks there. Not many of them, but a few.


	20. Chapter 20 Farmington, 2013

**Chapter 20 Farmington, 2013**

* * *

Charlie looked around, seeing the 'woods' as she imagined the man beside her was seeing them. They weren't really woods, just an overgrown patch of county land that nobody wanted by the kid's playground. Saplings and weedy undergrowth, all struggling in the poor soil. She risked a glance at Dean. His expression suggested he wasn't impressed, probably not by any of it, she thought with a small sigh. It was hard to find an escape from a humdrum world.

"How far is this place?" he asked, and she gestured vaguely at the path.

"Not far. Just over that little hill."

Another quick, furtive glance showed her that he was over his sourness at the make-believe world, and thinking about something else.

"What was so important you had to ditch Sam like a disappointing date?" she asked, trying to keep her voice casual, just a question to pass the time kind of casual.

He frowned at the dirt path, then shrugged. "We were hunting a vampire," he said, only a little unwillingly. "I had – had a good reason to believe we were tracking the wrong vampire, and Sam wouldn't listen."

The wrong vampire, Charlie thought, slightly mystified. "There are good and bad vampires?"

He slid a sideways look at her. "Maybe. Maybe not. I had a reason to trust the vamp Sam and another hunter wanted to kill."

Trusting a vampire. She couldn't make that fit with the little she knew of him. Then again, she thought, she really didn't know them.

"Why wouldn't Sam trust him?" Charlie asked. It'd always seemed to her that the two of them were prepared to give the other the benefit of doubt when it came to the hard decisions.

"I – I don't know," Dean said, his voice holding an edge. "Because I did? I don't know."

He shook his head, and she saw an expression of regret flicker briefly over his features, disappearing as fast as it'd come.

Dean had trusted the vampire. It didn't particularly gel with what he'd been like the last time they'd met. He hadn't seemed to her to be a person to trust at all if he could help it and to trust a monster … he took a long time to even trust people. He still didn't trust her. Another piece of their earlier conversation returned to her. He'd been in Purgatory, he'd said. For at least as long as it'd taken Sam to meet someone, fall in love and somehow break up with them. That was a while.

"So, um, what happened when Sam left?"

For long minutes, he didn't answer, and she didn't think he would at all. Then he said, "It all went to hell anyway."

He slowed a little, head ducking. "The vamp, he'd been trying to stay straight, you know? Found a place where he could control the hunger, control himself. Martin," he hesitated, then lifted his head, looking up the trail. "Sam put him on the vamp, and – well, he had a few screws loose. He went after Be-uh, the vampire, and it killed him."

Behind the short and disjointed explanation there were conflicting and painful emotions, Charlie thought, looking at him from the corner of her eye as he lengthened his stride, forcing to her to hurry to keep up with him.

That the vampire had meant something to him didn't seem to be in question, she decided. As to why Sam hadn't taken that into account, she couldn't work out that one. And something else had happened, something that had meant that Dean had to let go of his – friend, she wondered? Had the vampire been his friend?

"Sam gave me a choice," he said a moment later, the tension radiating out from him visible in the hunched look of his shoulders. She wasn't sure why he was talking to her about it, but it gradually occurred to her that maybe he didn't have anyone else and he needed to talk to someone.

He looked around at her. "It wasn't a choice I wanted to make, but I had to anyway."

She nodded, hoping it looked like an understanding nod.

"You wanted to know about Purgatory?" He was speeding up again a little and she lengthened her stride to keep up. "It was – it was a year of fighting everything that moved, practically. Non-stop. There wasn't any downtime and there was one way out, and Benny – the vamp – he …"

He trailed off, brows drawing together as some memory hit, filled him up, Charlie thought.

"He never let me down, not once," he finished finally, his expression smoothing out as he fixed his gaze on the path.

It was like a lightbulb, turning on, she realised, watching him. A sudden glimpse she hadn't expected, not only of the man in front of her but of their entire life. Having someone at your back you could count on would be more precious than treasure, more valuable than wishes, an essential to survival. The implication in his choice of words suggested that he had been let down, by others. Had trusted and had seen that trust broken. But the vampire, the one Sam had made him ditch, had never let him down.

She hadn't thought much about either of them, back when they'd asked her to risk her life and the oh-so-fake career she'd managed to patchwork together working for Roman, in order to save the world. She hadn't thought about anything other than trying to stay alive, the bombshells hitting her one after the after. Monsters disguised as people. Ghosts. The whole frickin' enchilada.

Later, on the long bus ride to Topeka, she had. Thought of them. Had wondered what kind of lives they'd had and why they did what they did. Neither had seemed all that happy with what they were doing. Dean had been blunt to the point of rudeness most of the time, but she'd gotten the impression a lot of that had come from having to rely on a civilian to get their particular job done. Sam … Sam had seemed more people-oriented, but just as focussed on ridding the world of the black-blooded people-eaters. After a while, after her arm had mended and she'd put together a new life, the whole thing had become kind of surreal, like someone else's life. Until, of course, now.

"What's with the hinky costume stuff anyway?" he asked her, slowing down again to let her catch up. "You guys couldn't come up with anything better than foam swords and fake leather?"

She felt a stab at his criticism. "Well, it's just a game," she pointed out defensively.

He snorted. "Yeah, my point."

"You think we should go all out, like the Renaissance people out west?"

"I guess I'm not seeing what you're getting out of this?" he said, modifying the derisive tone of his voice.

"Escape," she admitted. "Heroes and battles and – and – I don't know, something a little more than just the daily grind?"

She watched his expression change as he looked away. She knew what he meant. There were times she felt it too, that acid feeling of futility in what she was doing. It wasn't real, it wasn't even as purposeful as the re-enactment folks she'd seen, Civil War or medieval styled, making their own weapons and armour, learning how to use it properly. This, in comparison, was kid's stuff. Forts made of cardboard boxes and arrows with blunted heads that wouldn't hit anything because they hadn't been made to be used.

"Most of us don't really have the time to get into it that deeply," she told him. "We just want to kick back, have some fun on the weekends. You know, exercise that atrophying muscle called imagination?"

"Uh huh."

"Isn't there any way you try to get away from your life, get some R&amp;R, some time off?"

The expression that flashed over his face was gone too quickly for her to work out, but she wondered if what she'd seen was some kind of longing.

"We don't get a lot of time to do that either," he said, face and voice carefully neutral. "Always something out there."

"Well, that's what I mean," Charlie said. "It's not so gung-ho that we have to spend all our spare time obsessing it about it, but it's still a break, and most of the people here are pretty good, they're just looking for the same decompression."

"Hmm."

"You know, letting people go," she said. "Letting connections go, that's a good way to end up miserable and bitter."

His glance at her was sharp. "Keeping connections with people is a good way of getting them killed."

There wasn't much she could say to that, she thought. "Like it or not, we all need a few connections in our lives. Even if all they do is remind us that there are good people in the world."

"Everyone we've ever gotten to know – been close to?" he said a moment later. "They're all dead. Or we had to ditch them to keep them safe."

There was a wealth of emotion in his voice and she swallowed at it, realising something else. He cared about people too much. He pretended, maybe even to himself, that he didn't – or couldn't – or wouldn't. But he did. It wasn't just the guilt that seemed to hang over him like a shroud sometimes. It went beyond even a personal feeling of responsibility to those he'd felt they endangered. It was, it dawned on her, leaving her blinking in surprise, a chivalry that he'd been born with, one that seemed as much a part of him as the colours of his eyes. Not something he'd thought about. Not something he tried to be. Something he just was.

He would never voluntarily leave someone out in the cold, she thought. Would fight tooth and nail to make sure they were safe. But over the years of his life, she had the feeling that he had left people, unable to stop it, unable to do anything about it. And those were events he considered failures. Failures that went deeper than the situations could've allowed for. Failures of himself. Things that had changed his view of himself and the world he lived in.

It took her breath away, a little, seeing that. She turned away when he looked up, not wanting him to see it on her face, knowing without a doubt he would hate to see someone looking at him with that understanding.

"Did you ever wonder if those people," she said slowly. "Those people you ditched to protect, might have wanted to take the risk, just to keep knowing you?"

For a moment, she was sure she'd gone too far, that she'd see him clam up and turn away. He was looking at her, his expression uneasy, and she wondered remotely if he'd ever even thought of that.

"No," he said and he did turn away, his head ducking. "Alive and not knowing us beats the hell out being dead."

"People make choices, Dean," she said, thinking of her own choices. She'd been terrified but certain that she would be ashamed of herself if she'd walked away. "That makes it their responsibility, not yours."

If she'd died, in Roman's building. If it'd been her neck that had been broken instead of her arm, she would never have blamed him for it. Would she?

_Never contact me again, like, ever. Deal?_ She couldn't remember much about the bus station beyond the two of them agreeing with her. _What I care about is not getting my other arm broken ... or dying. _That'd been a douchey thing to say, she allowed, sliding a sideways look at him. One that she realised now had probably hit a lot harder than he'd ever show.

"You know, what I said back there, um, before," she said. "About breaking my arm and dying? I didn't – I just get – I talk without thinking about what I'm saying when I'm nervous."

He shrugged that off. "You were right. We got you involved in things that got you hurt."

At that, she stopped dead, her hands settling on her hips as she stared at him. "You got me involved?"

He stopped as well. "Asking you to break in –"

"I was working for Roman Enterprises," she corrected him sharply. "I broke that hard drive open. I saw the monsters before you even turned up."

"Yeah," he said uncomfortably. "But we asked you –"

"As I recall, Sam told me I didn't have to do it."

"But that was –"

"I know, I know, he's kind a sneaky that way, but that's not why I did," she interrupted him, then took a deep breath. "All my life, I've read about adventures – okay, so usually they were more magical and less people-eating gross than the levis – but, I kept telling myself that in those situations, I'd be there, you know? I wouldn't back down and run away. I'd do whatever I could do. And then, it happened."

"Charlie –" Dean said.

"No," she cut him off, shaking her head. "I was scared. But I was more scared of not being who I thought I was – who I'd hoped I was. I didn't get hurt because you asked for help, Dean. I got hurt because I chose to be there, and I didn't get out of the way quick enough at the time. That's it. That's all."

He was looking at the ground at his feet and she huffed impatiently.

"It wasn't how I thought it would be, you know, that whole savin' the world thing – but that doesn't change the fact that it was worth it."

He looked up, one brow rising sceptically. "That's not what you said when you saw us two hours ago."

She nodded in acknowledgement. "I know. I panicked," she said, giving him a half-smile. "Not my finest hour."

He didn't look convinced. "Sane people run when they see us coming."

"I think sanity is overrated," Charlie told him. "I can't do what you and Sam do. I know that. At least, not on a full time basis. You guys are – are – heroes, even if you don't think so."

She watched him turn away, looking down at his watch, and sighed. When did a five-second pep-talk ever do anything for anyone, she wondered? No one had been able to offer her the advice that made everything rosy and better.

"We need to get moving," Dean said and she nodded.

Most of the people she knew were like her, she thought, following him. Wanting adventure but not all that thrilled about it when it came calling. The man walking ahead of her, and his brother, and however many others out there that were like them, didn't think of it that way at all. It was a job. One that no one else seemed interested in doing. One that took everything they had and left them with no one but each other, at the end of the day. They didn't get paid for it and, she thought, with a flash of shame, they got precious little thanks for their efforts. She couldn't imagine a more fitting definition of 'hero' than that.


	21. Chapter 21 Raleigh, 2013

**Chapter 21 Raleigh, New York, 2013**

* * *

Outside it was drizzling again, he could hear the slur of the water over the roof, could see the drops collecting and falling where the holes were, slicking the old floorboards, gleaming in the dim light.

Inside, he was burning.

The confessional was small, too small for him and his legs were already cramping as he knelt awkwardly in the narrow space, staring at the fretwork screen, separating him from no one.

Or someone.

Sam sucked in deep breath, closing his eyes and folding his hands together on the narrow shelf.

_How to begin? Where to begin?_ Dean's suggestions rolled through his mind. _Ruby_.

_You chose a demon over your own brother …_

He had. He'd thought he was doing the right thing, had thought … his breath caught in his throat as the memories surrounded him, thick and choking with his delusions about being stronger. That's what it'd been all about, hadn't it? Being stronger than his big brother, able to get the job done while Dean vacillated and worried about him turning into a monster.

He opened his eyes and stared at the screen. He had. Turned into a monster.

_Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …_

In the trunk of the car, the demon had looked out of her eyes and then it'd gone, and all that was left was a woman, terrified, pleading for her life. Ruby had argued about it. _What's the difference between her and all the other meatsuits you killed to get at the demons inside?_ There was no difference, not to the innocent people he'd killed. They'd killed. But the nurse was the one who haunted him.

_I'm sorry._

It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

Pulsing through his body, two forces warred, burning and battling for possession. One, an ancient evil, that had, over years, infiltrated every cell in his blood. The other a divine power, seeking out the evil and immolating it, one cell at a time. Forty days and forty nights. Not a real number. But a real penance. Preparation for the struggle that was consuming him now.

_Killing Lilith. Letting Lucifer out._

Pride had driven him. To ignore the people who'd loved him. To listen to a demon who was manipulating him. _You didn't need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo!_ Ruby had been right. His choices. She hadn't forced him to do anything he hadn't wanted to do. She'd just given him the options and he'd done the rest, choosing the wrong path, choosing the wrong course, every single time.

He hadn't saved anyone.

_I'm having a hard time forgiving and forgetting here, Sam._

His head bowed. All his life, there had been one constant. One thing that had never changed. His brother, standing there, between him and whatever was coming for them; beside him; behind him. Always there. Dean had taught him how to tie his shoes. How to read. How to clean a gun and load it. How to get over a broken heart and how to stand up to the things he was frightened of facing. How to … do most of the things that had formed the foundations of his life. It hadn't been a smooth and easy journey, for either of them. What relationship ever was? Too much time together, too much unrelenting pressure. Too much fear. Too much … just too much. He'd seen his friends grow apart from their siblings. They hadn't had that chance, not until he'd run, gone to Stanford, shaken himself free of the life that demanded and demanded and gave little in return.

In college, he'd tried to bury his past. Pretend it didn't exist. Sam Winchester, student, pre-law, that's all anyone needed to know. Except for Jess. He'd told her a bit more. Not the real things, though. He hadn't wanted her to see those.

He'd been so angry with his family, he'd tried to pretend them out of existence for the first year, changing the subject when family came up in conversation, brushing off questions and telling outright lies. It'd taken longer to realise that there was a part of him that missed his brother. A lot longer to feel the pinch of loss for his father.

Their lives had been lived on the run and he still didn't know if the combative closeness they'd shared had been forced on them, or if it'd been something they'd somehow chosen. Dean had been his best friend for many years. His tormentor. His saviour when he'd forgotten a rule, taking the blame, standing between him and their father. Competent and frighteningly capable. The one who had his back. The one who knew his weaknesses. Sometimes so contradictorily gentle, that looking back, he could hardly believe it. Even now, he didn't know how his older brother could be so many people, all wrapped in the one, slightly battered exterior. Time after time, his brother had been able to see, somehow, what he'd been feeling. Giving rough comfort for the things that were just hurt pride or a skinned knee, but on those rare moments when the pain had gone in deep, Dean had opened up, revealing someone else, someone who stayed hidden most of the time, only coming out when really needed. Someone who cared too deeply and thought of that as a flaw, something he could be trapped with.

That exterior, he thought, was still pretending everything was fine. He didn't know what lay behind the infrequent smiles or the closed and shuttered expressions. Dean had stopped trusting him.

_I don't think we can ever be what we were, you know?_

It hadn't really been until that moment that he'd realised that he'd wanted them to have the unthinking and conditional trust he'd relied on his whole life. Not until it was gone. In the years that'd followed, they'd made some attempts to patch it over, put it back together again. None of it had worked. It hadn't been him, and it hadn't been his fault, when he'd been soulless, but that hadn't changed the impact on his brother. He'd been lost in a limbo of no leads and no answers when Dean had disappeared with Cas on the coattails of Roman's death, but that hadn't changed the impact either.

His back arched involuntarily as another flood of heat burned through him, and he gasped, eyes screwed tightly shut as he waited and waited for the agony to ease, to ebb away as it had before, slowly, gradually, leaving him feeling weak and shaky.

The anger, lying just beneath the surface, had been there as long as he could remember. Not always seething, but always waiting. He'd felt it and it had scared him, sometimes. The way it would come rushing out, lashing at anyone around him. In his nightmares, he could hear the clicks of the hammer falling onto the empty chamber, one after another as he'd pulled the trigger, the notch at the end of the barrel burned into his memories, sighted between his brother's eyes. That anger had been disproportionate, driven by something else, something not of him, but at the time, he'd known, with a sick feeling in his stomach, that he wouldn't have succumbed to it if those feelings, unarticulated – never articulated – hadn't been there to start with.

_You can't understand, _he'd told Dean_. It's not in you the way it's in me._

As if in response to his thoughts, fire raced through his chest. His lungs froze, his diaphragm seizing in reaction. Just breathe, he told himself, just in and out, until you remember how to do it automatically. It was harder than he'd thought it would be, fighting the pain of the blood boiling in him, fighting the tightness of his memories.

He'd trusted Dean. He thought he'd trusted him. And for some things, he had. But not for others. Gritting his teeth, Sam forced himself to see.

It'd been a few months after leaving Palo Alto. The nightmares about Jess had been dissipating. He'd pulled a leaf from his brother's book of dealing with crap and hadn't talked about them, had immersed himself in grief and guilt and had tried to call up that anger to help him through. A mistake, he knew. Revenge, retribution, payback … none of it had helped. And the anger had driven him hard, and it had been a thousand times worse when he saw what Dean had done for him.

_You shouldn't've done that. How could you do that?_

What he'd meant, but hadn't been able to say, was that he couldn't deal with the burden of having that sacrifice on him. Later, he'd told Dean that he should've known, he'd had to bear the same burden of guilt for their father's deal. He'd seen that hadn't mattered to Dean. He'd done his job. What it cost was irrelevant to him.

_If I'd killed Jake, instead of letting him live_, Sam thought, _none of what had followed would've happened_. He couldn't have opened the iron tracks. Yellow Eyes couldn't have given him the Colt to use as a key to open the gate. Dean wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself to save him. Everything would've stopped at that moment.

He might've turned into a monster then and there. Shaking his head, he didn't discount the possibility, but he couldn't make himself believe it. He hadn't been that far gone back then.

He'd done what he'd thought was the right thing, and it had all gone to hell. Good intentions leading the way.

_Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …_

The burden of having his life returned at the cost of Dean's had been manageable – he stopped at that thought, derisive laughter filling his mind at how he'd 'managed it' – but once Dean had been killed, it'd become intolerable, and Sam thought, he'd let it.

He'd tried to get Dean out. He'd tried everything he'd been able to think of. Everything Bobby'd been able to think of. None of it had worked. Now, he knew why. The whole thing, all of it, had been to get Dean down there. Demon armies, the manoeuvring between Lilith and Yellow Eyes, all of that had been the ruse. They'd only wanted one man. And they'd got him.

A _righteous_ man.

He'd been that, Sam realised, his hands curling into fists on the narrow shelf. No ethics to speak of, no respect for the law or authority in most of its human forms, but Dean had a thick, incorruptible streak of morality running through him that only a handful of people on the planet seemed to have. An immutable capacity for understanding the difference between right … and wrong.

He didn't know why he hadn't seen that until it'd been too late. He thought, he'd thought, later, going back through all the events and all the things that'd happened, all the choices he'd made, that he'd known it, somewhere he hadn't wanted to look at. Had known that his brother had been right about Ruby, right about the power of the blood, right about everything. But he hadn't faced up to it. He'd wanted to believe … he closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against his knuckles … he'd wanted to believe that he was the stronger, the wiser, the braver of the two of them.

Like a lanced boil, the admission brought a fluxing torrent of infected poison bursting from him. Shame and pain and guilt, bleeding and aching at the way he could see himself, finally. No more excuses. No more rationalisations. He'd wanted to prove to Dean that he was the better man. He'd tried to prove it.

_You know why I didn't tell you about Ruby, and how we're hunting down Lilith? Because you're too weak to go after her, Dean. You're holding me back. I'm a better hunter than you are. Stronger, smarter. I can take out demons you're too scared to go near. You're too busy sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Whining about all the souls you tortured in hell. Boo hoo. _

That memory brought a bone-deep shudder, a spasm of loathing. How the hell had he ever allowed himself to think like that? It wasn't conviction, or determination. It'd been arrogance, pure and unadulterated, driving him down a road that … and he'd never even seen it. Hadn't heard the way the words had sounded coming out of his mouth. When Dean had told him about what he'd done in Hell, he hadn't been able to say anything. What was there to say to a man who had once believed in himself and no longer did? He'd never seen his brother so … lost? Broken? He didn't even know how to categorise what he'd seen and heard. But he'd used it, he thought, another backflush of shame filling him. Had thrown it back at him when he'd been angry and the blood had been itching inside of him, and Dean wouldn't back down, wouldn't trust him.

A sound something between a laugh and a sob coughed out of his throat, his eyes filling.

Trust him? When had he ever given his brother a reason to do that? At first, he hadn't wanted to add the burden of his feelings onto Dean. The guilt and the nightmares about Jess. The slowly growing conviction that there was something wrong, wrong with him, confirmed with Dean's belated admission of what their father had said to him, confirmed with the visions of the other '83 kids, the ones who'd been fed by a demon. Then, he thought, he hadn't wanted to see the fear in Dean's eyes. It was a fear they'd both felt. A fear that their father might've been right. Keeping secrets. Telling lies. Hiding things he'd known would scare and infuriate his brother. Those first couple of years, they'd talked. A lot. Sometimes, they'd hadn't gotten much resolved, but they'd still talked to each other. They hadn't been so worried about disappointing one another, he thought. That'd changed. But it hadn't been Dean who'd changed. It'd been him.

He remembered looking through Dean's tapes, one day in the car, laughing because his brother hadn't seemed to be any different from the twenty-two year old he'd left behind. He remembered thinking then that his brother was a simple man, someone who saw things in black and white, in absolutes. He remembered Dean putting himself between Gordon and Lenore, taking on the hunter to save the vampire on his say-so. He remembered the phone call from his brother, when they'd split up in Indiana. Remembered the admiration in Dean's voice. He remembered being shocked out of his anger when Dean had told him – out loud and with desperation in his voice – that he was barely holding on. Remembered his brother's equally unwilling admission that he was worried that a part of him was missing, that when it came to his family, there was nothing he wouldn't do and he didn't know why. He remembered thinking then that what he knew of his older brother was almost nothing, that like an iceberg, what showed above the surface was only a fraction of what lay beneath.

In his veins, the battle was slowing. He felt light-headed, but he didn't know if that was a result of what he'd just gone through, or of too many days without food or sleep.

_The purification of the blood of the exorcist requires the deepest commitment_, Father Thompson's voice said in his mind, in his memory. _Redemption is only possible when the mind is certain, no further doubts or justifications present. Contrition is the first step. And acceptance of all one has done. Atonement is requirement, sacrifice offered freely and without thought of self. And forgiveness must arise from those things. We are all human. None can say he or she is better than any other. Knowing oneself, with perfect honesty and perfect truth, is the only way to purification._

Perfect honesty and perfect truth, Sam thought. No doubts or justifications.

_Bless me, Father, for I have sinned … I have killed, in pride and in ruthless carelessness. I have risked my mortal soul in collaboration with the spawn of Hell. I have believed … I have believed myself to be right and just in my actions, yet have known they could not be right. I have betrayed trust and faith in me. I have lied and hurt those who loved me. I have let them down._

_I have let him down. Too many times. I don't know how to forgive myself that._


	22. Chapter 22 Salem, 2014

**Chapter 22 Salem, 2014**

* * *

"This is your play? Corn?!"

Cain glanced at the man standing across the room and looked back down at the ear he held, pulling off the husk. He was impatient, he thought, mouth tucking in at the corners. As he'd been when he'd been a warrior and filled with the sense of his own power. There was something about the hunter, something … deeper, he thought.

"What am I not getting here?" Winchester said, walking around the table. "It's not like you're a coward."

He put the stripped cob to one side and looked over, eyes narrowing a little as they took in the hunter's expression. He couldn't help it, he thought. He genuinely wanted to know.

"Since when does the great Dean Winchester ask for help?" he asked him, seeing the faint flinch in the man at the words. That could've been a mistaken interpretation, Cain considered. He hadn't meant the words sardonically. In Hell's circles, no human's name was better known. And no human had been more speculated about over the last ten years.

"That doesn't sound like the man I've read about on demon bathroom walls," he added, shrugging and picking up another ear, his fingers stripping the green outer leaves automatically. "Maybe, you've lost a step?"

Again, there was a reaction, almost but not quite hidden, in the body, in the face, in the eyes. Desperation he could see clearly, held back only because the man was aware of his power. Behind that, though, there was doubt.

"Let's find out." He put down the corn and snapped his fingers, the old-fashioned refrigerator moving obediently aside from the door and the door opening behind it. Two demons burst through and the door and icebox slammed shut in the face of the others.

The meatsuits were local, he noticed with a bare hint of regret. Not the nicest folks in the small town, but probably not deserving the death they were about to face either. For any possession, there had to be some form on consent. He'd never known how Abaddon had gotten that from Colette. She'd had no weaknesses in herself or in her faith – he would've known.

"Oh, don't mind me," he said to the pair as they stared at him nervously. His reputation had been made centuries ago, but it was – occasionally – satisfying to see it still held. He waved an invitational hand toward the hunter. "Enjoy yourselves."

He ignored the infuriated look the hunter gave him as Dean pulled out a distinctive-looking knife, picking up another ear and beginning to strip it. Dean Winchester had a reputation as well. It was time to see if the man stood up to it.

Behind the hunter, the glass-paned doors crashed and splintered, a demon from the front of the house leaping through. Cain watched the speed of the reflexes, block and counter, weight dropped and shifted. The demon was not trained, not really, but was naturally fast. Not quite as fast as the hunter, but it didn't have the need to keep its meatsuit alive or intact and that made a small but vital difference. It ignored the crack of the patella as Winchester slammed the edge of his boot into the side of the leg, ignored the blows that slopped its brain in its skull. As the man ducked under a swing, it gripped his coat, lifting his weight and throwing him over the table and into the other two.

There wasn't a hesitation, Cain noted. Dean slid off the table and onto his feet, one hand gripping the demon in front of him and the other driving the Kurdish knife into its abdomen, reddish gold light flooding from the vessel and lighting the man's face as he dragged the blade up. No thought of the person possessed, nothing tentative about attack and defence. He committed to every action, unconcerned if it meant taking a hit, determined to get the last blow.

As the destroyed demon dropped to the floor, the hobbling demon from the doorway came around behind the table and the female demon launched herself at the hunter. He watched the male slammed a boot toe into the back of Winchester's thigh, both grabbing his arms and lifting. There was a wheeze from the man as he hit the table on his back.

Demonkind was stronger, faster, more powerful. There weren't many hunters left in the world who had the skill and experience to take them on in combat. Held back to a small extent by the physical constraints of those they possessed, they could still push a meatsuit well past its normal physical limitations. Something that not many humans could do voluntarily. The female drove her thumb into the nerve centre in the hunter's shoulder, catching the knife as it fell from his paralysed fingers.

Pinned to the table, riding the blows of the demons as much as he could, Cain caught Dean's gaze as it shifted to him.

"You're doin' great," he said to the man, his tone an amiable mix of reassurance and patronisation.

Whether the comment was a goad or not, it seemed to clear the hunter's thinking. He watched as Dean drew a leg back sharply, snapping it out to hit the female in the chest and knock her back into the kitchen wall. With one arm free, he swung at the demon still holding him. Even flat on his back, Cain saw the shift of his weight, the blow knocking the demon's head to one side. Still trying to keep a hold on the man, the demon did not know how to use his weight in his return punches and they glanced from Winchester's cheek and forehead without the brain-shaking damage the hunter was doing in return. He saw the demon shift back and the man jacknife from the table, holding the wrist and driving a knee into the bent-over meatsuit, releasing the wrist and twisting a little to one side to deliver a kick that sent the male demon flying back into the cupboards behind him.

Cain's eyes narrowed as Dean swung back around to the female behind him. Whatever doubts the man had had when the demons had first entered, they'd gone now. He could see the complete concentration in the hunter's face, the exact knowledge and awareness of himself, his opponents and what it would take to take them out. It was an interesting switch, he thought. Perhaps the man had thought he would make a move.

Under his sleeve, the Mark was quiescent, cool and uninvolved, despite the presence of the demons. It no longer drove him. No longer had power over him. Colette had been right. He wished he could tell her.

The female demon was facing him but warily now, Cain saw. Winchester's hand snapped out to grab a dishcloth from the edge of the sink. He spun it, wrapping his right hand and catching the free end in the other. She was nervous, her eyes darting from the man's face to the cloth. She would make mistakes now. Lunging toward the hunter, Cain watched as Dean slid aside, the knife skating past his stomach, his arm rising. The female had overextended and the hunter dropped the loop of dishcloth over her head, tightening around her neck and swinging her off her feet into fridge in front of the door and around into the china cabinet on the far wall. He turned and faced the male, dropping the cloth and grabbing a fry pan from the top of the fridge, the loud clang as it hit the side of the demon's head bouncing from the walls of the room.

Cain saw the flurry of action clearly, each move discrete as if time moved at a different rate for him. He saw the demons' reluctance to engage with the hunter, despite the fact that they hungered for him. He saw the hunter absorbing everything about them, effortlessly, and probably, he considered, without knowing he was doing it. Winchester was naturally good, he had an instinctive understanding of spatial relationships and of weight and speed, inertia and mass. He'd been trained young enough for most of his abilities to have blossomed. He didn't think, didn't waste time, was economical and efficient. Still, the demon thought, there was room for improvement. Understanding would enhance skill and speed, providing shortcuts for the manoeuvres that the man seemed to use but without knowing why. All those instincts could be honed to a far greater degree. And they would have to be.

Abaddon had been the most talented of all those he'd taught in Hell. Faster. Stronger. More ruthless and with a predator's single-mindedness. Kill or be killed. She'd seen everything that way. The man was strong enough, he thought. But he still had to be pushed, had to be prodded and goaded into his best efforts. Against the archdemon, he would fail.

Unless.

He watched as Dean thrust the knife through the female's ribs, dropping her body and staring at the last demon. He ignored exhaustion, Cain noted. Ignored the injuries he'd received. His stamina was holding well, his breathing even, if a little heavy. It didn't affect his concentration. The male demon was wary now as well. No matter how often they'd talked about the man down in the pit, they hadn't really believed, he thought, hiding a smile as he got up to get a beer from the six pack on the counter, stepping back as Dean hit the cupboards with his back and rolled onto his feet. He sat down and studied both combatants.

The demons, most of them, had heard plenty and seen almost nothing. Between the two brothers, Alastair, Samhain, Lilith and Azazel had been destroyed. Angels had died. Lucifer – the devil himself – had been put back into the lowest level and sealed up there with Michael, leaving Hell and Heaven in states of chaos neither had ever experienced. He glanced at the demon standing in the other room. Crowley had snatched the throne inexplicably, a mere crossroads demon, and Heaven had lost every one of its archangels.

They should be worried, he thought, watching as the male threw itself into attack, only to be met by counter and jab, grip and turn. Winchester's face was coldly expressionless as he threw the demon onto the table, ramming the blade of the knife into its throat. He met that gaze steadily.

He didn't like to be tested, but he knew when he was. Was that a part of the awareness every successful – living – soldier had, or something else, something more calculating?

On first impression, the hunter had seemed simple, single-minded and without vanity or artifice. Leaning back in his chair and taking a swallow from the bottle in his hand as he watched Dean pull the knife from the demon's throat and push the body off the table, Cain could see that he wasn't. Far from it.

"What, was this some kind of a test?"

"If it was, do you think you passed or failed?" Cain asked, lifting the bottle.

Dean looked around. "They're dead."

"Yes," Cain said, leaning forward. "They are. And that in spite of the fact that you could be a lot better than you are."

He watched the hunter's brows draw together and smiled. "What did you see in them?"

Dean looked up, the frown still there, his eyes darkening a little. "Untrained."

"Yes. What else?"

"They were – nervous," Dean admitted after a moment's thought.

"They were," Cain said, getting up and dropping his empty bottle in the trash can, and pulling two fresh ones from the pack. He put a bottle down on the table and returned to his seat. "They were nervous of a man." He looked up at Dean. "Did it occur to you to wonder why?"

Pulling out a chair at the end of the table, Dean reached for the bottle, setting the knife down at the same time. The overhead light drew a gleam from the serrate and slightly curved blade.

"That."

"No." Cain shook his head. "Not that. The man who wielded it."

He could see disbelief in the hunter's face. That sense of doubt had returned. "You and I are very much alike."

"I didn't kill my brother."

"No," Cain allowed, wondering if that was the only point of similarity Dean had let himself notice. "You saved yours. Why?"

Watching the shadows of emotions passing over the man's face, he thought that Dean didn't have an answer to that, not one he believed in.

"Because you never give up on family – ever," the hunter finally said, looking at him.

"Being honest with yourself is something you will have to learn to do," Cain told him, smiling as he lifted his bottle and took a mouthful from the neck. "Nothing is a greater waste of time and effort than trying to believe something you already know is a lie."

"I don't know what kind of game you're playing here," Dean said, pushing the beer aside and getting to his feet. "But I need the First Blade. Just give it to me and we're done."

He wasn't ready, Cain thought. But he would have to be. And that would bring more pain than he could imagine to his life. Pain that would swallow him whole. Looking at him, he thought that Winchester knew about pain, knew enough to make the choice even if the consequences were laid out in front of him. He thought he would be strong enough to withstand the Mark's terrible compulsions as well. But the cost – the burden – he didn't know if the hunter would be able to withstand that. His memories were as sharp and clear as they had been when they'd been formed. The isolation had been the hardest thing to bear. Harder than Hell. Harder than all he'd done with the Knights. Harder than losing her. He welcomed it now, but he had despaired then. And Dean was more similar to him than simply in circumstance. There was, in the man, the same need, to protect. To carry the responsibilities. It would affect him in the same way, he thought. It would bend and distort everything about him, leave him lost in a wilderness of his own making.

It would be his choice, in the end, the demon decided. Choice – free will – was a double-edged sword. There was always a cost and always a consequence to whatever one chose. Perhaps this man would listen. Perhaps not.


	23. Chapter 23 Beulah, 2014

**Chapter 23 Beulah, 2014**

* * *

Dean Winchester was a right royal pain in the arse.

There, he thought, he'd said it. Picking up the glass of eight-year old blend that was all the bar had – _eight!_ – Crowley grimaced as he swallowed a mouthful and stared morosely at the hunter.

Hunter. Now demon. And still a demon hunter.

He'd thought it would be perfect. For years he'd been watching the man struggling under the load he carried, giving up a life and life itself to save people, save the world and failing every time to save himself. He'd heard, in graphic detail, what Dean had done in his time in the pit, thinking at the time of the well of darkness that had to have been formed in the man. The combination of that darkness, hidden away as much as possible but still, Crowley considered, still there buried in the deeps, and freedom from his burdens of being human, being fallible and mortal and moral and fighting everything … he'd thought the hunter would welcome it, embrace it … howl at the moon and relish the chance to be exactly who he was with no apologies and no excuses.

And Dean had, he thought, scowling down into his glass. But not – not in the way he'd envisaged it.

Six months – more – of the Mark driving him. At first, it'd been what he'd hoped for – Bangkok and Monte Carlo, Macao and backstreets of Paris, women, whiskey and living like fucking oil princes without, it'd seemed, a care in the world. Then the Mark had begun to exert its influence and Dean's moral streak had aligned with it and suddenly all the laughs had flown out the window as they'd left crime scene after horrific crime scene behind them, and Dean's excesses had grown greater and greater. Half the bleedin' souls he'd taken had already belonged to Hell, deals broken – no, shattered was a more accurate term, the demon corrected himself caustically – and their hotel rooms had begun to resemble the leftovers of the more self-destructive rock bands of the 70's.

He probably should've explained to the man that the human pleasures of the flesh weren't really enough for a demon. Probably should've mentioned it, at least. Drugs, alcohol, sex – no matter what flavour or variety – adrenalin rush and physical danger weren't really up to the appetites of a creature that could barely feel anymore. It was only pain, someone else's for preference, that could draw feeling from the flesh of the meatsuits they wore.

_What the hell is the point of this then?!_ Dean had yelled at him in the hotel room in Tangiers, throwing a twenty-thousand dollar vase through the plate glass windows in his frustration and necessitating yet another hasty withdrawal from yet another city.

And that'd been the start, Crowley mused, barely noticing the inferiority of the whiskey with his second mouthful, staring sightlessly at the wall on the other side of the _vin ordinaire_ bar room.

Back to the US, to the cities that teemed with malice and spite, with careless indifference over life and death, and more spree killings, baffling police, incensing the organised crime members that were the primary targets, driving the FBI around the twist with their forensic teams returning nothing but sulphur powder and blurred security video at every single scene. Chicago. New York. Boston. Atlantic City. New Orleans … god ... he remembered the riverside city with a shiver … New Orleans had been awful. But Las Vegas had been worse.

He'd slapped a sleep-awhile spell on the hunter after finding him, licking the blood from his fingers and looking around the basement of the casino in a kind of dazed satisfaction, and dragged him here … Beulah, North Dakota, a nothing town in a farming region, as far from the bright lights and temptations of pleasure and sin as he could find, hoping he would be able to convince Dean of the facts of demonic life – keeping his soul deals being the first and most important part.

The law enforcement agencies, the crime networks, even the angels couldn't have done anything to either of them, but that wasn't the point. The Mark wanted sinners and half of the hunter's kills had been brokered already … gamblers and murderers, thieves and adulterers and rapists and molesters … Hell was filling up but it was making him look like – like – Abaddon, Crowley thought in disgust. And then there was Dean's brother. Dean had been leaving a wide and unmistakable trail behind him for Moose to follow.

Looking at the bartender, he waggled his glass, watching Winchester through the mirror that backed the bar.

Dean was attempting to get drunk, the effort commendable but mostly unsatisfactory, Crowley thought. He was bored here, the demon knew. Bored and becoming more and more focussed on that boredom.

In one short week, he'd already made his way through most of the women in the small town, currently bedding the insipid-looking blonde who was serving tables and watching him from the corner of her eye as he played a game of pool. He was bored, and far more disturbingly, he was becoming less demon and more human, Crowley thought, eyes narrowing as he watched the game, waiting for a burst of temper, waiting for anything to indicate he wasn't watching two small town losers whiling away their welfare-funded endless days.

The Mark needed righteous kills. It would press and burn if it didn't get them. In Beulah, there just weren't that many truly evil people. He'd done what he could, plucking the lowliest of his followers from the brimstone reek and telling them of a chance to kill the hunter. The Blade drank and Dean returned, more or less sated, to engage in another round of drinking and sharpening his poker and pool hustles, fornicate and pretend that it was all he wanted.

What Alastair had done, what Dean himself had done, it hadn't taken, Crowley decided, leaning his chin on his hand as he watched the man move around the table, straightening up and sinking the remaining balls on the table in smooth succession. No matter what those who'd seen it said, it hadn't gotten through.

The Mark was the only thing giving Dean the powers of a demon. Not his soul, not his conscience. He felt no remorse for what he'd done or what he was doing, but he wasn't killing the innocent and he wasn't drinking the pain of his kills either, Crowley realised belatedly. Even in Vegas, the man had left four alive, witnesses who even at a second's glance had obviously been in the wrong place at the wrong time, not a shred of indecency in any of them. And Dean had left them alone.

_You are worthy_. Cain had said it when he'd given the Mark to Winchester. At the time, Crowley had thought that the demon had meant Dean would be the killer he was. Would kill without regret or consideration for the shades of grey that lay between black and white. But Cain had meant something else. The Mark and the Blade had been a punishment and an eternal task. Murder had to be paid for, but Cain had killed in compassion, believing it the only way to save his brother. And of that, Crowley thought uncomfortably, Dean was worthy. Too worthy.

He watched the hunter's expression become flat and cold as his opponent opened his mouth to protest the hustle, closing it again when he caught sight of Dean's face and backing away from the table. Dean picked up the money that sat on the cushion and folded it, tucking it into his jean's pocket.

The waitress walked over, and Crowley saw his expression change, the smile easy and all too human. When the Mark was sated, there was little of the demon in the man. It didn't matter that he couldn't gain the pleasures he'd thought he have, Crowley thought. Neither the time in Hell nor the Mark nor the demonisation of his soul had touched whatever it was that lay like iron at the core. He said he didn't care about the woman, didn't care about living or dying, didn't care about anything, but he'd lied.

Ruling Hell – re-creating Hell – together had been the entire purpose of bringing Dean's soul back from the limbo between all planes, where the Mark held it. And it was a futile dream. Dean wasn't interested.

Perhaps it would be worse than that, Crowley considered, tossing the final mouthful down and setting the glass on the table. In time, the Mark would drive the hunter further while that humanity nagged at him to do the right thing. To all intents and purposes Dean had become a Knight, as Cain had before him. Trained and imbued with the power of Hell, but unlike Cain, there'd been no thousands of years spent in the abyss to blacken his soul. Only a few short years and a lifetime of being …

… a _Righteous_ Man.

The prophecy had required it. And he'd been raised. To complete the ending. To lock Satan back in his cage. To help his brother – not to kill him.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, staring at the table. Moose had almost certainly traced the call by now, and was probably breaking every speed limit across the intervening states to get here by morning. There was no chance of Dean being the partner he'd wanted, the muscle to his mind. No chance of that at all, he thought, looking back at the hunter as he talked to the waitress, leaning back against the pool table, looking more like any one of the regulars in this pissant little town than a hunter – or a demon – or a demon hunter.

Had he been wrong about the weight and the burden, he wondered? Had some part of the man taken on those things, not from a lack of choice in the matter, but from a need he hadn't even acknowledged to himself? Their relationship had been full of its ups and downs – mostly downs, Crowley admitted, brought on by himself. He'd been unable to help it, really. Dean hadn't been in the habit of looking at every angle back in the old days, had walked into the situations he'd suggested with a blind faith that because he wouldn't break a deal, he wouldn't necessarily sweeten the deal from his own side either. Naïve.

He had the feeling that had changed. The demon part of him – the blacker part of him – was learning fast to look at what everyone else wanted before he committed himself to a course of action. It was no bloody comfort when his motivations were being pried apart as well.

_Only a servant of God can kill the Whore_. He remembered the angel saying that in one of the penny-dreadfuls by Carver Edlund. It should've come as no surprise to any of them, he'd thought at the time. If ever a man had been watched by God, it was Dean. Did it make him incorruptible?

Leaning forward on the table, he pondered that. In his experience, of souls and men and Hell, there was no such thing. Dean didn't believe it, he thought. The hunter believed he was tainted to the bone, had believed it for a long time, giving up on whatever it was he'd wanted or dreamed about, telling himself that he was poison to others, that he was …

_No hates you as much as you_, he'd told him, back when Dean had taken on the Mark. _Trust me, I've tried_.

That was true. He hadn't known why, exactly, then. Edlund's books had detailed the situations, the events, sometimes even the feelings that both men had felt, pushed and shoved into the impending apocalypse, but there hadn't been a single paragraph about what Dean had thought about himself. What he'd believed about himself.

Crowley had seen it in the last six months. When the demon was running, it'd been with a savage joy, a fierce compulsion to be wild – or to be free. But in the aftermath, when the needed peaks hadn't materialised and the knowledge had repeatedly beat down on the man, that he couldn't escape from who he was and what he was and what he'd become, Dean had withdrawn into moods of fury and bitter desolation. It'd taken him awhile to recognise what had driven those moods. Nothing as simple as disappointment or as maudlin as self-pity. No, it'd been hatred he'd seen in the man's face.

Not even satiating the Mark had been able to overcome those times or ease the loathing that had boiled and surged, breaking free in the destruction of hotel rooms, in orgiastic three day parties … the last time Dean had telekinetically caused every slot machine in the casino to pay off at the same time, laughing at the ensuing chaos. Demonic? Yes. Dark? Not so much.

Those had been the times he'd left, vanished without a trace and stayed away, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days. His returns had been without apology, but whatever it was he'd done, wherever it was he'd gone, it took away the rage for a short time.

"_What is it with you?" he'd asked him when they'd been standing in the riven mess of the suite at the Four Seasons._

_Dean had looked around the room, his expression almost vacant. "Daddy's little girl, he broke in thirty."_

_The words had come out in a bare whisper, unwillingly._

"_Dean?"_

_Blinking, the hunter had turned to him, expression to his face, anger to his eyes. "What the hell you want from me, Crowley?"_

He gone then and Crowley had waited for a week before he'd shown up again, calmer, smiling derisively at the ticking off he hadn't been able to help shouting at him.

Dean Winchester had been broken in Hell, but not in the way he'd thought, the demon had realised a short time later. He'd broken on the rocks of his beliefs, of his view of himself and that would take a miracle to fix. Sighing, he leaned back in the chair, his gaze returning to the hunter. He wouldn't – or perhaps couldn't – change that view or let go of it and that view - together with the possible incorruptability and the pressures of the Mark - meant he would not dance to anyone else's tune, ever again.

He could've been a king, Crowley thought, staring morosely at the empty glass. If he'd been just that little bit different.

One last chance, he told himself, looking back at the hunter, not quite willing to cut him loose this minute. One last chance to make up his mind and choose. Then that would be it.


	24. Chapter 24 Lebanon, 2014

**Chapter 24 Lebanon, 2014**

* * *

_I came back and Crowley was standing there, that little smirk on his face._

_And it was different. _

I_ was different._

Dean tried to sit up, and pain, rancid and insistent, plucked through the nervous system that had been returned to him. Every second of the demon's excesses was present in the torn muscles, strained tendons, fractures and bruising, the deep, throbbing aches … and the memories.

They were as sharp and clear as glass. Turning his stomach if he looked too long. Pulsing behind his lids whether he was sleeping or awake.

He set his teeth against it all and managed to half-roll upright, reaching for the glass of water on the nightstand, the warm glow of the lamp keeping the black shadows at the edges of the room at bay.

The water slid down his throat and soothed the dryness, a temporary but painful side-effect of the demonic cure. He had no idea how or why it'd worked, that cure. He hadn't been transformed in Hell. Crowley's wafflings on the nature of human souls and the powers of the Mark had been just that – waffling – and he'd been pretty sure the King of Hell hadn't had a fucking clue as to how he'd been able to bring his soul back from wherever it'd gone on dying, or imbue it with the power of a demon. Not just any demon either, he thought, remembering the way Crowley's underlings had cowered back at the sight of him. Something special.

Special because of the Mark.

Swallowing another quenching half-glassful, he wondered about that. Cain'd said he'd become a demon. A Knight. And had trained other Knights. He hadn't gone into details and Dean still didn't know exactly what it'd meant. Was relinquishing life the only thing the Mark needed to take over completely?

He looked down at his arm. The scar was there, raised and reddened, but quiet for now. He didn't feel the driving need, boiling through his bones and blood, to kill anymore. Didn't feel much of anything anymore, he thought, unsure if that was a relief or something he should be worried about. It might come back when he wasn't feeling as if he'd gone one-on-one with Godzilla and been pounded into the pavement for several weeks. Or maybe the Mark needed the Blade to generate that unendurable need.

Shaking his head cautiously, he thought not. He'd killed Saint-Clare with the Blade, long before Abaddon. Killed him and Sam'd talked him down and he'd been mostly fine until the Blade had gone through the archdemon's ribcage and buried its tip in her heart.

Finishing the water, he looked longingly at the jugful on the nightstand that Sam'd left there for him. The damned thing was full and couldn't've weighed more than a few pounds, but he knew it would cost plenty to lift that sucker and pour himself another glass.

Some distantly recalled phrase about mountains and coming and going prompted him to inch along the edge of the bed. He stopped, his lungs heaving like bellows, when he was close enough to drag the jug to the side of the nightstand and transfer the straw from the glass to the jug. It would take some time for all his parts to get back to working the way he expected them to, he decided, leaning forward a little to catch the end of the straw between his lips. He sucked down a huge mouthful and felt the sweet moisture flood mouth and throat.

Sitting back, he looked at the far wall of the room, shrouded in shadows, the weapons hanging on the wall curiously sinister-looking despite his familiarity with them.

What he'd done in Hell had never let him go. What he'd done over the last seven months had been worse. A lot worse. No innocents had died by his hand, he'd been able to control that much, at least. But kill he had, by the hundreds and every kill was branded in his mind. He'd corrupted, taking out his fury at the limitations of demon flesh on those he'd sought to find relief. He'd lied and thieved and whored and none of it had meant anything … at the time. Most of it had slid away without reaction or response, lacking in the one thing a demon could feel, Crowley'd said, the one thing a demon needed – it's food and drink.

_Pain_.

The kills had satisfied that. Not one a clean ending to life. His torturing up here had been far less agonising than what he'd been able to do down in the pit, but here it was for keeps and wanting it or not, their pain had satiated. Had satisfied.

_Don't be so full of yourself, Sammy. 'Cause, see, from where I'm sitting … There ain't much difference from what I turned into to what you already are._

Flinching a little from that memory, he couldn't unknow it, couldn't take it back. What Sam'd done, filled with desperation in the last few months, had shocked him, though he had memories of laughing about it at the time.

_Who cares what you meant?! That line that we thought was so clear between us and the things that we hunted – ain't so clear, is it? Wow. You might actually be worse than me!_

The only thing that hadn't been truthful, that he'd known would cut his little brother deeply, had been the crack about being worse than him.

There was nothing in this world worse than what he'd become.

_Killer. Outcast. Unclean. Monster. Demon. Torturer. Murderer._

What was he now? Not a hunter. No more than Gordon had been a hunter, twisted and driven by a revenge that had eaten him down to the marrow of his bones and had turned him long before the fang had gotten to him.

_Human?_

Technically, he guessed. Red blood. Clear eyes. He looked down at his arm again. Maybe not.

Not a demon. Not any more. Whatever the cure had acted on, he thought it might've broken the connection between the Mark and Hell.

_Your, uh… guilt-ridden, weight-of-the-world bro has been M.I.A. for quite some time now._ That had been the truth.

When they'd started, he'd been astonished – no, too tame – astounded was closer to it – by how he'd felt.

_Free._

_Weightless._

_No responsibilities at all. _

_No guilt._

_No emotions._

_No pain._

For the first couple of months, he'd been tripping, he thought, leaning toward the jug again as he felt the dryness inch back up his throat. Tripping the light fantastic and not a fucking care in the whole, wide world. He could do anything he wanted and he'd done everything he'd wanted, not thinking of consequences or repercussions, not thinking of anyone but himself.

It'd taken some time to realise that everything felt hollow – like a dream or a prop or a story told by someone else – and that'd coincided with the Mark's awakening, playtime over, work to be done. Even for a demon, apparently.

In some ways, it'd been better. In others, worse. Not at the time, he remembered. He'd seen them all, seen them with a sense other than the five he was used to. Seen them and followed them and wiped them out, licking the blood spray from his fingers and lips afterwards. Nothing could touch him.

Working hard had meant partying harder but the novelty had worn off and he'd realised that the only way he'd get any pleasure from what he did was through inflicting pain. That hadn't mattered so much to begin with. Then he'd needed more pain. And then more. And somewhere, inside, where maybe flickers and vestiges of his human soul had been hiding, waiting and watching, he'd known it was never going to be enough. He'd become demon through the Mark, but it wouldn't take that long to blacken his soul sufficiently to walk into Hell without feeling the heat or the suffering. To needing the pain as a source of sustenance, instead of a source of pleasure.

And he'd started ditching Crowley then.

Just watching. At first. Hidden against the night-time sky and watching from a distance. Then getting closer. He'd told himself it'd been by choice, but he didn't think he'd had much choice at all. He'd needed and he'd reacted, both man and demon in accord, though he'd had no idea of why it'd happened like that.

He didn't understand the alchemy behind those times but the rage diminished and the Mark quietened and he could breathe again and he didn't want to know why. Not then. Not as a demon.

Now … now it was too late. He'd dreamed again of the dark room and the bright light, that voice that wasn't a voice, that spoke somehow inside of his mind but wasn't him either. Nothing that voice could say could convince him that there was a chance of redemption now. He'd almost believed … before. Almost, but not quite.

He looked around the still room and dragged in a deep breath, feeling the muscles covering his chest twang and protest, the cartilage between his ribs throb and twist. He wasn't going to improve if he just lay around all the time, and the pain was good, the pain reminded him that he was human, that he was mortal, that he could die. He forced his legs to work, take his weight, keep it balanced and pushed back at the cacophony of demanding data from his nervous system, breath hissing slightly from between his teeth.

_Just to the door and back for today_, he decided, swaying a little as he let go of the bed. _Just get the blood circulating_.

It'd felt as if Sam had superheated his blood, with every injection. Felt as if his brother had been injecting acid into his veins. Agony had eaten through every cell and there'd been nowhere to turn for escape, it'd been inside, unreachable. Unbearable. He hadn't been able to tell if the Mark had fought back. Sam hadn't said anything about Crowley shrieking in agony, but then the King of Hell was a self-confessed masochist and maybe he'd been enjoying it until the balance had swung more to human and less to demon.

His muscles were shaking and he wondered if this was going to be such a good idea. If he face-planted, his brother would be in here in thirty seconds, demanding to know what he was doing when he was supposed to be resting.

_Resting_, he thought sourly, taking another small step and feeling the boost of anger give a little energy to the step. He could hardly shut his eyes, knowing what would appear behind the lids and half the time he was seeing those memories when he was just lying there, trying not to think about anything at all.

Three days. It'd been three days since he'd opened his eyes and looked at his brother without feeling that searing indifference to Sam living or dying. To anyone living or dying. It would take the rest of his life to figure out how to pay for it all.

_If the Mark kicks up again, the rest of your life could be pretty short_. The thought slid in and he stopped his forward progress, eyes closing and fists clenching. He'd deal with the Mark when he could get himself out to the car and take her for a drive, he told himself. Without the demon juice and the high voltage compulsions, he wasn't likely to feel it for awhile.

Sliding his foot across the floor, he took another step, sweat rolling down his face and the back of his neck, damp through his hair and trickling down his chest and back. Just another couple of feet and he could turn around, he told himself.

He was aware of what he was doing, even when he pretended to himself that he was just getting on with it, just putting one foot ahead of the other, same as he'd always done, keep moving or die. While he was barely able to hobble across the room, it wouldn't matter. Once he could get around again, get back into shape, it wouldn't stay down. Wouldn't stay mostly quiescent and buried and leaving him mostly alone.

_You act like I want to be cured!_

He hadn't but he'd still been mostly demon then, he thought. The trouble was, he wasn't sure he wanted the cure, even now. Not caring, not feeling … that'd been as much peace as he'd ever gotten in one hit. The Mark hadn't tested him, not really. He'd felt no remorse for those kills and he still couldn't. On the point of the Blade, he'd watched them die, murderers, molesters, those who could never be touched by law or justice, despite the fact their hands were elbow-deep in innocent blood, the ones who'd watched from the shadows, hiring muscle to do their dirty work for them. Thieves and rapists and those who'd stolen more than just money, who'd stolen lives and dreams and hopes, the Mark had been seething with the injustice of them living and breathing. Crowley'd been going off his brain, telling him he'd been cutting deals short, and he hadn't cared about that either.

Human enough to get out of the 'cuffs and across the trap. Not human enough to want to face what was waiting for him.

He reached out and his fingers touched the door, clutching at the dark wood as he forced himself to take the last step and lean up against it. When that last shot had gone in, he'd thought he was dead. There'd been nothing, not even pain, just a suffocating, airless blackness that'd seemed to be reaching into him, finding every last sorrow, every last regret and drop of guilt and winding it into a shroud that Sam could bury him in.

He couldn't say to Sam – or anyone else – _I never wanted to be that, I never wanted to be that way_. It wasn't the truth. His heart had started beating again and air had rushed out of his lungs and back in, filling them up and everything had come back, that old load, that hated, familiar weight … crushing him under it. Choices and mistakes. Blame and judgement. Guilt and responsibility. The losses and the hopeless knowledge that he'd never dealt with them, never grieved and let go, couldn't let go, couldn't them be forgotten, couldn't forgive himself for them, had to keep them close and make up for it somehow.

He hadn't wanted to be demon but he'd wanted to be free. Where, exactly, did that leave him?

Pushing off from the door, he looked at the twelve feet separating him from the bed. One foot in front of the other. Like always. Just deal with today and figure out tomorrow when it turns up.

It took twenty-one steps to get back across the room and the muscles in his legs and back and abdomen were twanging like piano wires by the time he let himself fall onto the side of the bed. A few days. That was all it would take.

Rolling onto his back, he pushed and shoved himself higher on the bed, gritting his teeth against the aches and pangs and twitches. A few days of being here, trapped with his thoughts and his memories and the way that all felt, and he'd be ready for the nuthouse, he thought.

Looking up at the ceiling, he thought of the dark room and the voice that wasn't a voice. If he'd been so goddamned important in the scheme of things, why hadn't someone helped him, he asked that voice silently. Why hadn't someone stepped in to stop him from taking the Mark from Cain?

It wasn't an answer, just an echo, a bare recollection.

_Free will._

Dean closed his eyes and turned his head away from the light. Free will. He'd chosen. He'd have to pay. No one was going to rescue him from his own decisions.

* * *

**END**


End file.
